The Delet Program

Opening the Door to Greater Understanding

Free to Maine K–12 schools

Mission:

View video to learn more about the Delet program

“Delet” is the Hebrew word for “door,” and the Maine Jewish Museum’s signature K–12 education program opens doors to greater understanding of Jews, Judaism, and Jewish life in Maine.

At a time of rising antisemitism and deepening polarization, Delet uses education, conversation, culture, and personal connection to challenge stereotypes, build bridges, and give young people the knowledge and tools to recognize and respond to antisemitism and other forms of hate.

Our goal is not simply to teach students about Jews. It is to create meaningful encounters across difference, encourage curiosity, and help young people see beyond labels and assumptions.

History

The seeds of Delet were planted in 2009, when MJM’s founding Executive Director, Rabbi Gary Berenson, recognized an unmet need: many Mainers knew little about Judaism, and some had never met a Jewish person. He began welcoming individuals and groups into the Museum to learn about Jewish religion, history, and culture.

In 2022, with support from the Sam L. Cohen Foundation, the Glickman Lauder Foundation, and MJM friends Robert Wills and Nancy Winslow, the Museum built on that foundation to create a dedicated education program focused on Maine students.

Since then, Delet has grown dramatically in reach and scope. What began primarily as programming for middle and high school students is now a K–12 initiative serving schools and communities across Maine. We bring the Museum to schools and schools to the Museum, developing sustained partnerships with educators and creating programs that connect Jewish history and contemporary Jewish life with the subjects students are already exploring in their classrooms.

What we do

Delet is free to Maine K–12 schools. We work directly with educators to create age-appropriate, interactive programs tailored to their students, curriculum, and learning objectives.

Depending on grade level and subject area, students may explore Jewish religion and culture, Maine Jewish history, immigration, the Holocaust, contemporary antisemitism, civil rights, identity, art, music, literature, storytelling, and the remarkable diversity of Jewish life.

Older students learn to recognize antisemitic stereotypes, conspiracy theories, and contemporary manifestations of antisemitism and develop the critical-thinking skills to challenge them. Younger students encounter Jewish traditions, stories, objects, music, art, and culture through accessible, engaging experiences built around curiosity and connection.

Delet learning happens both inside and outside the Museum. We bring educators, Jewish community members, artists, historians, performers, and interactive programming into schools throughout Maine. We also help schools visit MJM, including providing assistance with transportation costs when needed.

At the Museum, students can step inside a century-old working synagogue, encounter Maine Jewish history and contemporary Jewish art, ask questions, meet members of Maine’s Jewish community, and experience Jewish life as something living, diverse, creative, and continually evolving.

Delet also extends beyond a single classroom visit. Through long-term school partnerships, special performances and cultural programs, the Delet Mentorship & Leadership Program, and new educational resources, including Faces & Facets of Jewish Life in Maine (our bilingual English-Hebrew art book capturing contemporary Jewish life in Maine), we are creating multiple pathways for students and educators to engage with Jewish Maine.

Staff

Rabbi Gary S. Berenson, Founder

Rabbi Gary S. Berenson is the founding Executive Director of the Maine Jewish Museum and the founder of the educational outreach that grew into the Delet Program. A lifelong Mainer and longtime Jewish communal leader, Gary has spent decades introducing people of all backgrounds to Judaism and Maine Jewish life.

Rabbi Andy Bachman, Scholar in Residence

Rabbi Andy Bachman is founder of Water Over Rocks and the Center for Midwestern Jewish Communities, a unique entity devoted to the preservation of history, memory and civic responsibility. He is also Senior Consultant to the Jewish Community Legacy Project.

Andy writes for a Substack called Water Over Rocks and has written for a number of publications, including Newsweek, the Daily Beast, the Washington Post, as well the Forward, the Jewish Week, the LA Jewish Journal and Tablet Magazine. He has served on boards of UJA Federation of New York; Plaza Jewish Community Chapel; New Yorkers Against Gun Violence; and Ark Media.

Dawn LaRochelle, Executive Director & Delet Program Director

Dawn LaRochelle has served as Executive Director of the Maine Jewish Museum since 2022 and leads the development and expansion of the Delet Program. A former educator with a master’s degree in education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, she works directly with Maine educators to develop customized programming on Jewish history, culture, identity, contemporary antisemitism, and bridge-building across difference.

Education Leaders

Rabbi Bill Siemers

Rabbi Bill Siemers has led Congregation Beth Israel in Bangor since 2014. He was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary and previously served communities in Philadelphia, Southern Maryland and Long Island. Rabbi Siemers has been on the faculty of the University of Maine since 2014 where he has offered courses in Jewish History, Antisemitism, and Yiddish. He has also taught at the University's Honors College and at the Penobscot Valley Senior's College. He lives in Bangor with his wife Deborah and they have two children.

Core Consultants

Marcel Polak

Marcel Polak was born in Paris, France to Holocaust survivors. He and his family immigrated to the US when he was 4 1/2. He was raised in Brooklyn and Queens, NY. While living in NYC, he graduated from Queens College with a B.A. in History/Art History.

He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Maine Jewish Museum and the Woodstock Conservation Commission.

Areas of Expertise:

Rescue and Resistance During the Holocaust
Jewish Immigrant History
Jewish Life in Rural Maine

Anna Wrobel

Anna Wrobel is an American historian, teacher, poet, Holocaust Studies educator and daughter of Polish Jewish refugees, a rescue partisan mother and Soviet soldier father. Her poetry and essays appear in Cafe Review, Lilith, Off the Coast and Jewish Currents. Anna has two poetry collections, Marengo Street (2012) and The Arrangement of Things (2018). Her work appeared in University of Maine’s Holocaust Human Rights Center’s art and poetry exhibit, Dilemma of Memory, and she’s presented for the Puffin Foundation on Jewish resistance.

Areas of Expertise:

American History, Civil Rights, and the Holocaust
Holocaust History, Memory, and Second-Generation Experience
Poetry and Arts-Based Learning

Delet Mentorship & Leadership Program

A new pathway for deeper learning, curiosity, and Jewish engagement

Building on Delet’s K–12 mission, the Delet Mentorship & Leadership Program offers high school students an opportunity to take the next step: moving from participation to deeper exploration, leadership, and contribution.

What Is the Mentorship & Leadership Program?

This enhanced Delet track pairs motivated teens with MJM staff for individualized, semester- or year-long projects that reflect a student’s interests—from history and research, to exhibition work, to community storytelling, to arts or cultural programming.

Through regular check-ins, guided exploration, and hands-on experiences, mentees:

Develop leadership confidence and critical thinking
Gain professional skills in research, writing, curation, and public engagement
Learn how museums preserve and interpret Jewish history
Discover the role they can play in shaping Maine’s Jewish future

Each project culminates in a public component: a presentation, publication, exhibition element, program contribution, or community resource.

Who Is It For?

The Mentorship & Leadership Program is designed for:

High-school students (grades 9–12)
Curious, motivated learners
Teens who want to explore Jewish history, culture, identity, or community life
Youth seeking a meaningful capstone project (A.P. History, Senior Project, etc.)

No prior museum experience is required — just openness, curiosity, and a willingness to grow.

View the video “The Delet Program: Russell Kaback 25044 — A Jewish Grandson’s Musical History of the Holocaust”

- Delet Presents: Ari’el Stachel
  Friday, October 16 2026
  9:30 am – 11:30 am
  
  Free for middle and high school students and educators
  
  What does it mean to belong when no single box quite fits?
  
  Tony and GRAMMY Award-winning actor, writer, and singer Ari’el Stachel brings his acclaimed one-man show,OTHER, to Maine Jewish Museum for a special Delet performance for students.
  
  Stachel, who won the 2018 Tony Award for his performance as Haled in Broadway’s The Band’s Visit, grew up navigating a complex identity as the son of a Yemenite-Israeli father and an Ashkenazi-American mother. In OTHER, he transforms his experiences into a funny, vulnerable, deeply personal exploration of identity, anxiety, self-acceptance, and the sometimes messy search for belonging.
  
  Moving between characters from his past and different versions of himself, Stachel asks questions that resonate far beyond his own story: Who gets to decide who we are? What happens when other people’s assumptions collide with our own sense of self? And how do the parts of ourselves we once tried to hide become sources of strength?
  
  Following the performance, students will participate in an interactive Q&A with Ari’el about his life, creative process, resilience, representation, and the journey from a kid struggling to understand where he fit to a Tony Award-winning Broadway performer.
  
  This special Delet program is offered free of charge to Maine students and educators. Transportation assistance is also available.
  
  Recommended for high school students; middle school students are also welcome.
  
  For more information, contact
  
  Program Coordinator Rebecca Moudachirou
  at .
  
  Ari’el Stachel’s Maine Jewish Museum residency and all associated programs are made possible
  through the generous support of the Sam L. Cohen Foundation.
- Bring Delet to Your School
  Interested in bringing the Maine Jewish Museum to your students, bringing your students to the Museum, or exploring a customized Delet partnership?
  
  We would love to hear from you!
  
  Please email us at
  
  or call us at 207-253-3198

Delet Program Testimonials:

Slide
“I would like to thank you for hosting our ninth-grade Humanities classes and allowing them to participate in the Museum's Delet program. It was an extraordinary experience and one that I believe our students will remember for a long time.”

- David Ruiz
Director, Albert Lepage Center for Diversity & Inclusion
Hebron Academy

“Your presence and presentation made an impact on our class conversations and in the hearts and minds of the students. Several expressed how helpful it was to have some background knowledge to help connect what we've learned about present-day antisemitism to a historical context, and wish they had known this sooner! I even heard y'all had some visitors from our class at the Maine Jewish Museum that day after school – a true tribute to your relationship-building skills! THANK YOU!”

- Caro Woodward
9th Grade History Teacher
Baxter Academy

“Dawn! It was wonderful having you and Andy present in my classroom. It helped students make connections between our current social studies unit about WW II with our previous unit on the U.S. Civil Rights Movement and our educational field trip to the Maine Jewish Museum. These connections between units help make the knowledge ‘sticky.’ We appreciate your time and expertise, and I truly think you helped broaden the world view of our students. Thank you so much!”

- Nicole Fox
English Language Arts/Social Studies Teacher
Bruce M. Whittier Middle School

Slide
"Whittier Middle School had an incredible experience working with the Delet Program! Field trips have been a challenge with financial struggles, so when we were offered an opportunity to go to the Maine Jewish Museum, watch a performance, eat lunch, and travel for free, it was an easy yes. A free opportunity to help our students learn is rare and very exciting! Our students really loved the performance and frequently talked about it after we returned. It helped enhance their understanding of the Holocaust by hearing a true experience. The opportunity for our kids to step inside a synagogue and also hear about the Jewish religion was amazing! Most of our students are Christian, Catholic or non-religious. Learning about a religion and being allowed to ask any kind of questions was really special to watch. The kids were really engaged in their own education.

When Andy and Dawn came into the classrooms, it was another opportunity for students to learn and understand the Jewish religion. They did a great job of enhancing what kids had learned in the Civil Rights Movement through quotes from the bible and the Declaration of Independence and discussion of how Jewish people helped with the movement.

They allowed kids to think for themselves, discuss important ideas with their peers, and share their knowledge. They also gave them the chance to make a decision on how to deal with a situation involving antisemitism that is currently happening. This program has educated my students and helped build empathy in them. I would not only recommend the Delet Program to all schools, I also look forward to continuing to work with them in the future."

Jamie Karaffa
Social Studies Teacher
Bruce M. Whittier Middle School
2025 Maine National History Day Teacher of the Year

Slide
"I cannot speak highly enough about the Delet programming that worked with our 9th grade students at Casco Bay High School. In support of our study of the Holocaust and genocide, Dawn LaRochelle, Rabbi David Sandmel, and Marcel Polak came to CBHS to run a full lesson for each of my 9th grade classes. This lesson expertly captured important Maine Jewish history, engaged students in deep learning about the story of a Maine family impacted by the Holocaust, and created space for students to reflect on how we can prevent bigotry and respond to ongoing incidents of hate. This powerful lesson helped students not only deepen their academic learning, but also allowed them to reflect on the humanity of the history they have been learning. The lesson engaged not only their minds, but also their hearts.

Working with Delet in preparation for the lesson was an absolute joy. The entire team was communicative and collaborative. It was clear that this was not a stock program, but rather one that was tailored to the specific needs of our students. This was further evident from the tweaks and shifts that were made from one iteration of the lesson to the next. Despite having an already wonderful lesson, the Delet team were constantly striving to better meet the needs of the diverse learners in our 9th grade. The team was also remarkably flexible and willing to work with our school schedule, including coming in on two different days in order to be able to meet with each class period that I teach. I deeply appreciate the dedication and care that they put into planning and implementing the program. I would recommend them to anyone and I look forward to welcoming them back in the future."

- Matt Bernstein
9th Grade Social Studies Teacher
Casco Bay High School
2023 Maine Teacher of the Year

Slide
"Our class of seventh and eighth graders had such a lovely visit to the Jewish Museum, and the kids really connected to the Delet Program. Our morning offered a great variety of activities -- a hands on collage workshop in which an expert artist guided the kids through a project to explore their own identities; a lively and informative tour given by Rabbi Bachman who was really attuned to the kids' interests and questions; and finally a walk through the museum's current exhibit. Throughout the morning, my students felt welcomed and empowered to ask questions and express themselves. They learned a lot about Jewish history and the universal values Judaism espouses. They were excited and engaged throughout -- even before their pizza lunch. We were so appreciative of this opportunity and look forward to visiting again soon!"

-Peter Nowak
7th and 8th Grade Teacher
Friends School of Portland

"I want to sincerely thank you for the amazing opportunity you gave Freeport Middle School students when you invited us to attend the clarinet performance by David Krakauer and members of the Portland Symphony Orchestra. This performance, accompanied by the tour of the museum, was such an amazing opportunity for our students. It gave our students a chance to build their understanding of the Jewish culture, gain knowledge about some of the history of Portland, and on top of all that, see a fabulous musical performance covering multiple genres.

When Andy and Dawn came into the classrooms, it was another opportunity for students to learn and understand the Jewish religion. They did a great job of enhancing what kids had learned in the Civil Rights Movement through quotes from the bible and the Declaration of Independence and discussion of how Jewish people helped with the movement.

- Erin York
6th Grade General Music Teacher
Freeport Middle School
The Delet Program is made possible through the generous support of the Sam L. Cohen Foundation
and the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine.

Sam L. Cohen Foundation

The Museum is partially funded by the Maine Jewish Museum Wein-Hirshon Family Endowment Fund, originally established by Katie and Phil Getchell in honor of David Glaser. Contributions welcome.

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