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Rabbi Akiva Herzfeld is an alumnus of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship Program. Rabbi Herzfeld serves as the Orthodox Rabbinic Advisor at Harvard Hillel, and is the rabbi of Congregation Shaarey Tphiloh of Portland, ME. He is married to Michal Herzfeld, a student at Harvard Law School. He can be reached at akiba183@yahoo.com. This editorial was first published in the Portland Press Herald. In early November of the year 1620, a
Nov 2007
Rabbi Shira Stutman is an alumna of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship Program. She is a Rabbi at Congregation Kesher Shalom in Abington, PA. Shira can be reached at sstutman@gmail.com. In the beginning of Parshat Toldot, God is busy. Within the course of two chapters, God answers Isaac’s prayer for a child; gives Rebekah an answer to her question about her uncomfortable pregnancy (“two nations are in your womb...”); and twice
Oct 2007
Dr. Lila Corwin Berman, an alumna of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship Program, is an assistant professor of history, religious studies, and Jewish studies at Penn State and is spending this year as a fellow at University of Michigan's Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies. She can be reached at lcberman@psu.edu. *This piece first appeared in The Forward. I had to apologize to my younger self when I agreed to teach
Oct 2007
Eliot Goldstein is a member of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship Program. He works for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Eliot can be reached at ebg243@nyu.edu Jewish tradition and the Ten Commandments stress honoring our mothers and fathers. This is clearly a "biggie" in Jewish life – but not one of the most easily defined mitzvot. My father is a very active lay leader in a large metropolitan Jewish community.
Laura Lauder is a venture philanthropist and political junkie. Her passion is Jewish education and leadership development. In 2002, she founded a new initiative in recruiting and training Jewish Day school teachers, called DeLeT: Day School Leadership through Teaching, inspired by the Wexner Fellowship model. She can be reached at laura@lauderpartners.com This summer, WH Alumna Laura Lauder, from San Francisco, traveled to Central Europe with Jewish singer/songwriter and Wexner faculty
Rabbi Dara Frimmer, an alumnus of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship Program, is Assistant Rabbi at Temple Isaiah in Los Angeles. Outside of work, she can be found hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains or shopping at the local farmer’s market. Last week, she played tennis with Rabbi Ahud Sela, continuing a match started during a Wexner institute. She can be reached at RabbiDara@templeisaiah.com. Adonai said to Avram, “Go forth from
Oct 2007
Michael Jacobs is a writer whose work has appeared on and off Broadway, television and film, including thirteen television series that have won Emmys and People's Choice Awards. The shows include “My Two Dads” and “Charles In Charge.” He and his wife, Patti, also a Wexner alum, consider their Wexner experience one of the most rewarding of their lives. He can be reached at MSJ26@aol.com As a writer, certain use
Oct 2007
Rabbi Brett Krichiver is an alumnus of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship Program. He is a Rabbi at Stephen S. Wise Temple in Los Angeles. He can be reached at brett330@gmail.com. This week we begin with a beginning. I’ve always found two particular things compelling about this most famous of all opening lines. According to the Masoretic tradition, we begin chanting this most holy of holy books with… a grammatical error. A vowel
Margaret Jelinek Lewis is a Houston 06 member of the Wexner Heritage Program. She is a psychology professor at Tomball College who recently welcomed her new community to her home to celebrate the bris of her son, Ahron. Margaret can be reached at msjlewis@mac.com. All of my adult life, I have lived in do-it-yourself Jewish communities: small congregations that depend on lay leadership to build the community. Recently, though, we moved
Sep 2007
Deb Housen-Couriel is Director of the Wexner Israel Fellowship Program and herself an alumna of the program. She can be reached at dhousencouriel@wexner.net "Never again has there arisen in Israel a prophet like Moses, whom the Almighty had known face to face, none like him for all the signs and the wonders which the Lord sent him to do in the land of Egypt, to Pharoah and to all his