8000 Walton Parkway, Suite 110
New Albany, Ohio 43054
614 939-6060
Jul 2014
Silicon Valley specializes in creating new things. Silicon wafers with brains. Eyeglasses with cameras. Cars without drivers. To that list, I’d like to add one more innovation: a model of religious life for Israelis that gets beyond pointless divisions between religious and secular Jews. For the last three years, I have served as headmaster of the South Peninsula Hebrew Day School, Silicon Valley’s one Orthodox day school for grades PK-8.
Jul 2014
On Wednesday afternoon, our Wexner Israel Fellowship Alumni Institute began at a resort hotel in Nazareth. I began my remarks with a prayer for Gilad, Naftali and Eyal, for their families and for those seeking to find them. It was a prayer for calm and, as always, a prayer for wise leaders who might somehow find a way to bring peace to the region. All nodded heads in agreement. And
Pictured: Heritage Alumni from Cleveland 05 got together to study the Book of Ruth before Shavuot. Clockwise from back: Susan Borison, Ilana Horowitz Ratner (Wexner Heritage alumna and our teacher), Scott Garson, Steve Soclof, Jessica Semel, Stephanie Silverman, Hallie Abrams, Loren Frieder, Karin Schleifer, Scott Simon. What a wonderful way to start the day. We learned about the Megillah for Shavuot – Ruth – and will be meeting 5 times
For centuries, Jews have turned to the Mourner’s Kaddish upon experiencing loss. For three years, I co-edited an anthology, Kaddish: Women’s Voices, that explores what the recitation of Kaddish means specifically to women. I am delighted to share a bit about this special project. In Kaddish: Women’s Voices, women from around the world share their relationships with the family members they lost, how they struggled to balance the competing
Jun 2014
The following is a letter that Rabbi Elka Abrahamson, President of The Wexner Foundation, shared with the second cohort of the Wexner Service Corps, our Columbus-based teen service-learning initiative, on their final night of their Jewish service-learning trip to New Orleans last week: Dear Wexner Service Corps! I have to be in New York first thing tomorrow morning for an all day meeting and the last flight out meant my reluctant
Jun 2014
As the Wexner Israel Fellowship (WIF) year draws rapidly to its end, I remember one of my greatest laughs from the beginning of the year. We happily spotted the Kosher meat section in one of the supermarkets, just to discover that on one side of it rested sachets of clams and on the other side packages of bacon. Could I learn something from this kind of peaceful co-existence? At Harvard
Jun 2014
In 2012 I co-founded the Cleveland Jewish Arts & Culture Lab with Rabbi Zachary Truboff, a young Rabbi and Torah Scholar. Our premise is that the Arts can become an incredible source of creativity in the Jewish community providing an opportunity to “reinvent” tradition and the Torah for today. Simply stated, we facilitate a Jewish Artist Fellowship program for 10-14 Jewishly identified Clevelanders that culminates in an Exhibition of original
Jun 2014
Wexner fellows and alumni of all stripes were on hand for the 50th annual Celebrate Israel Parade in New York City, including these two next generation Jewish leaders: Noah Ives-Kurtzer, son of WGF alum Yehuda Kurtzer (Class 15) and Isiah Rosenn, son of WGF alumni Rabbis Jennie and David Rosenn (Classes 4 and 5 respectively). Rabbi David Rosenn, Executive Vice President at the New Israel Fund, leads NIF’s operations in
Jun 2014
On June 2, 2014, Professor Deborah E. Lipstadt, Ph.D., who has served as a faculty member for all three Wexner leadership programs, spoke at the Dedication of the Holocaust Memorial at the Ohio Statehouse. Deborah was introduced by Leslie H. Wexner; other speakers included Governor John R. Kasich and architect of the memorial, Daniel Libeskind. Here are her remarks: Thank you to my friend and compatriot Les Wexner for that
In my 1999 Wexner Graduate Fellowship application, I shared my dream to “open a group home and multi-service agency for Jews with developmental disabilities that would provide therapies, as well as social, religious, educational and recreational programming, vocational training and job placements.” 15 years ago, I could not have known that my quest would ultimately lead me to a community that was enabled by a Wexner Heritage alumnus with a