Every Monday and Wednesday afternoon, Rhea McDonald arrives at Hinkle Fieldhouse where she greets the small cluster of students waiting for her. Soon, music fills the small gymnasium and transports the group into another culture.

Not everyone is so deeply invested in sharing their culture, but Rhea McDonald has loved to share her Israeli heritage since she was 15 years old. She loved to dance Israeli folkdances with her youth group, and it was then that she went to a summer camp to learn how to teach Israeli folkdance. From then on, teaching Israeli folkdance has been a passion for her. Now, she teaches dancing to a wide range of people from third-graders to college students.

“I guess Israeli dancing is my way of connecting to my religion, my ‘people’ and the country of Israel and its culture,” McDonald said.

Israeli folkdance is a dance that is usually done in a circle with a group of people. It reflects Israel’s melting pot culture because the dance itself is a combination of many different types of dances such as salsa, waltz and the cha-cha.

McDonald was born in Washington, D.C. to first-generation Americans from Brooklyn. She moved to Indianapolis in seventh grade. She stayed in the area for college and attended Indiana University with a double major in psychology and Near Eastern languages and literature. She chose the latter major because she wanted to learn to speak fluently in Hebrew.

She studied six years of Hebrew in Indianapolis to prepare for her bar mitzvah, but the first time she visited Israel in 1972 she couldn’t speak the language because she had only been taught how to pray in Hebrew.

“I was bound and determined that the next time I went to Israel, I would be able to speak Hebrew,” McDonald said.

McDonald went on to attend Colombia University in New York to earn her master’s degree in finance. After graduation, she got her first job with Elizabeth Arden. She stayed in New York until she and her husband, who has a doctorate in chemistry, both got jobs with the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly and Company. Then, they moved back to Indianapolis.

The high-pressured, corporate world did not agree with McDonald, however, and she took a leave of absence. She raised three boys who are all now in college. For the past 14 years, she has worked as a part-time accountant for a custom home builder.

McDonald’s strong connection to her family was apparent when she said that her biggest fear was that something bad would happen to someone that she loved. She smiled as she described her sons.

“They have all grown up into nice, young men,” she said.

Although raising a family and working is important to McDonald, Israeli dancing is still her favorite hobby and she loves to teach it on the side. In 2000, McDonald began teaching Israeli folkdance to the public on Thursday nights at Greenbriar Athletic Club. She also began teaching children at Sunday school around the same time. In the fall of 2005, she began working at Butler University teaching Israeli folkdance which was offered as a physical education class.

Marilyn Strawbridge, an associate professor with Butler’s physical education department, said that McDonald’s class offers a variety of advantages to students.

“Israeli folk dance is good for our program because it is an activity involving rhythmics and music and is physically and mentally challenging and is plain fun. It also adds a little ethnic diversity to our collection of offered activities,” Strawbridge said.

It’s hard for McDonald to choose which class she likes to teach best -- her class for adults, her class for college students or her Sunday school class.

She said that she likes to teach at Butler because the kids “pick up the dances quickly, so they are easy to teach.”

“With the Butler students, I am teaching really advanced dances after only four weeks of class, and all of the students go into the class with no dance experience at all,” McDonald said.

McDonald’s students enjoy taking her class as much as she enjoys teaching it. Butler junior Adam Kegley took her class twice.

“I took her class because I was pulled in by two of my friends. I decided to stick with the class even though I wasn't receiving credit for it. Then I took it for credit second semester and I liked it so much that I took the advanced class as well,” Kegley said. “My favorite part of class was the dancing and the education about how different people from different cultures dance. "It was a lot of fun learning a style of dance that not very many people know."

McDonald is equally fond of her classes for the public on Thursdays. Usually about 15 adults aged 40 or older go to the class each week. She thinks of those classes as the ones just for her.

“I get to do the dances I like,” McDonald said. “Plus, there is never any judging and we just have fun.”

She teaches Israeli dances to about 20 to 25 second-graders and third-graders on Sundays at Congregation Beth-el Zedeck, a Jewish synagogue. McDonald especially likes teaching these children because they have no inhibitions.

“They haven’t conformed yet to what people tell them. They don’t care when people say, ‘Boys don’t dance!’ They have no inhibitions. Some of them dance in the middle of the circle,” McDonald said.

The children are also very creative when it comes to teaching Israeli folkdance. They love to improvise.

“If I teach them a step and they don’t like it, they will make up their own or add to it. They improve a dance,” McDonald said.

While the children are letting loose during their dance sessions, they are also benefiting by absorbing their culture.

"Connecting to Israel is an important part of our mission as a synagogue school. Israeli dance is one way that we can do that in a fun and interesting way," education director for Congregation Beth-el Zedeck George Kelley said. "Many dances grow right out of the stories of our people, be they Biblical or modern.

"It is a great way to bring a Jewish cultural piece into the children's and families lives."

It is clear that McDonald does not care who she is teaching her culture’s dance to; she simply loves to teach it. She loves that it is a group activity without judging.

“It doesn’t matter if you are a ballerina or not. No one cares what you look like or if you can dance or not,” McDonald said. “It’s just a way to have fun, meet people and get exercise.”

Despite the fact that McDonald teaches large groups of people several times a week, she is actually soft-spoken and shy.

“I would describe myself as a shy and quiet person -- I get very nervous just before coming to teach a class,” McDonald admitted. “But once I get started I just get carried away by how much I enjoy what I'm doing, and I hope that I can pass on some of that enjoyment to the dancers attending my classes.”

Indeed, McDonald’s small frame matches her quiet voice. But her patient personality makes her capable of teaching her classes with ease by involving each of her students in the dances.

“She has a passion for what she does and makes her class fun and fast moving,” Strawbridge said.

McDonald has had great success with her teaching, but her proudest moment was in her third semester of teaching Israeli folkdance at Butler. One of her classes decided to have a recital to demonstrate all of the dances that they had learned. McDonald proudly described how her students chose their favorite dances and took turns introducing each of the dances by explaining why they liked that dance or what the song lyrics were about.

Faculty from Butler’s P.E. department and from the Health and Recreation Center attended the recital as did students from McDonald’s Thursday night classes. McDonald’s parents even came to watch the recital.

“We loved putting on the recital -- I had a friend videotape it, too! It was fun to show people the dances we'd talked about all semester,” said Emily Oury, a junior at Butler.

McDonald’s enthusiasm about Israeli dancing is obvious. She is eager to invite everyone to her classes and is quick to pass out flyers advertising her classes.

“She loves dance so much that she does the folkdance in her basement by herself even though you would normally have a group of people. It's definitely a big passion for her, and she loves teaching it to anyone!” Kegley said about his teacher.

McDonald shows no signs of letting up on her dance teaching. She discussed plans to teach dances for the 60th anniversary of Israel as well as special holiday programs at her synagogue that will be taking place soon.

“Israeli folkdance is my passion. There is no money in it; I just do it because I love it. I try to bring it to as many people as I can,” McDonald said.