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I’m proud and grateful to invite the Wexner community — and those in your communities — to explore Hadar’s new website: www.mechonhadar.org. This isn’t another brochure site: its heart is a pair of databases of durable, high-quality content. The site’s most ambitious and distinctive feature is a new tool for prayer-leaders, from beginner to experienced. At a glance, users can stream or download the standard (Ashkenazi) nusach for a prayer, communal melodies
Nov 2014
Pictured: US Supreme Court Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan had a lively conversation moderated by Nina Totenberg at the 2014 JFNA GA. The Wexner Foundation brought Wexner Graduate Fellow Classes 24 and 25 and Wexner Israel Fellowship Class 26 to this year’s JFNA General Assembly. As a group, we gathered for meals and to reflect throughout on the entire experience, from the plenaries to the individual sessions. Participants
Nov 2014
This photo is from the cover of the authors' latest book, Leadership in the Bible: A Practical Guide for Today. Jacob acquires Esau’s birthright for a bowl of stew. Jacob, the home-body buys; Esau, the hunter, sells. Twin brothers — very different decisions. The story has a lot to say about what goes into making a good long-term decision. We can assume that as a good hunter Esau possessed a number
This blog originally appeared in eJewishPhilanthropy on November 16, 2014. ‘Thank you’ is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding. Alice Walker Gratitude. We learn from an early age that it is important to be grateful, to appreciate what we have – to say thank you. Indeed, a national survey on gratitude found that more than 95
Nov 2014
Aliyah was a dream that my wife and I had, sometimes talking about it as a dream for the distant future. As we became parents to four children, we looked around and considered the best place to raise them. We visited Israel on a pilot trip last January to see if we should move there. We were especially drawn to Israel because of the love that Israelis showed to our
Nov 2014
Twenty-five years have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Erected in 1961, it stood less than a kilometer from where I sit now. The end of the Cold War destabilized Jewish identities and politics around the world. I still recall marching on Washington in 1987 to “free” Soviet Jewry. In a matter of moments, that sacred mission, which had been a cornerstone of American Jewish life, no longer
Photo courtesy of The Kavana Cooperative In 2006, Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum co-founded The Kavana Cooperative, a new kind of nondenominational Jewish community for the twenty-first century, deeply committed to religious pluralism and strongly influenced by Seattle start-up culture. This week, eJewishPhilanthropy posted a story from Rachel which presents the fascinating results of a demographic study of Kavana members, or “partners,” that showcase what’s unique about Kavana’s institutional model, what’s working,
Nov 2014
True to its name, a mission is extremely purpose-driven, and superbly intense. It jam-packs past, present, future, fear, uncertainty and hope, and you come home reeling and exhausted from a sensory and emotional overload. None of this is negative — it is usually a self-and-community-transforming-event that you slowly unpack and savor for some time thereafter. My husband Robert and I very recently had the privilege to lead approximately 50 fellow Miamians
This is my first contribution to WexnerLEADS since becoming Director General of The Wexner Foundation, Israel, six months ago. I’ve chosen this moment to write because I have something to “report”: we have just completed the admission process for the first cohort of our new Wexner Senior Leadership Program. Prior to my arrival, the Foundation engaged senior Israeli public service leaders, as well as a number of prominent Wexner Israel
Paris is home to 300,000 of France’s 600,000 Jews. Anti-Semitism is being fomented by a dangerous “cocktail” composed of radical Muslims along with, increasingly, those on the far left who were inflamed by the Gaza conflict. We went to show support and understand the unique strengths and vulnerabilities of the French Jewish community, which actually dates back nearly 2,000 years. Going beyond the terrifying headlines from this past summer, we