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Mar 2014
We began the Wexner Graduate Alumni Institute with a Talmudic text from Masechet Ta’anit. The passage offered us a framework for thinking about change through the lens of teshuva: One who has sinned and confessed, but has not done teshuva is like a person who holds a sheretz, an impure creature, while in the mikveh. All of the waters of the world cannot wash away your impurity so long as you continue
Mar 2014
As part of the selection process for the Wexner Israel Fellowship, all of us were asked to write an essay discussing our connection to American Jewry. The exercise was spot on, as it signaled two issues that would be at the center of our “Wexner” experience this year at Harvard. The first is the fact that our actual previous interaction with and knowledge about the vastly diverse Jewish community in
“Good news and bad news. The good news is that The Purim Superhero is officially a PJ Library book. The bad news is that PJ Library is not distributing the book as it does with ALL other PJ books. This second class status is tremendously disappointing to me. This isn't the full inclusion and equality that Keshet and its supporters work towards. Let's hope that PJ will realize that this
The Sunday of President’s Day Weekend, The Wexner Foundation brought Rabbi Yitz Greenberg to Columbus to share his thoughts and his legacy through a day long filming session meant to capture his seminal message, The Triumph of Life. The video will be shared with the Wexner network when ready, as well as other organizations and future generations. As the film is meant to celebrate Yitz’ life work, I thought I
Feb 2014
There’s a lot of talk about how initiatives like Birthright and Hillel successfully engage young people and forge greater self-awareness of their Jewish identities while identifying ways they can contribute to our communities locally, throughout the United States, and in Israel. Given some of the discouraging findings from the recent Pew Research Study, successful initiatives like these and others to come must be supported. But what about people like me?
Wexner Israel Fellows from the current class at the Harvard Kennedy School (Class 25) spent 2 days in New York City over President’s weekend as part of a series of intensive learning about the North American Jewish Community (NAJC). The workshop included conversations on identity, peoplehood, and service with Heritage alumni from the metro area. Pictured here are some of the participants engaged in conversation at the Museum of Jewish
Those of us, both professionals and volunteers, who seek to serve Jewish life are increasingly dependent upon reliable data and sound evidence to do our work well. While more and more information swirls about us, we have all too little understanding of how it is generated, produced, distributed and accessed. Our colleagues at the AVI CHAI Foundation asked for our assistance in trying to better understand what knowledge sources guide your work, and in particular
Feb 2014
Marketing expert Gary Wexler published an article this week in which he delineates 10 marketing challenges the BDS movement has thrown up for those who are working to counter it. Acknowledging how formidable a foe the BDS movement is to those would like to meet them on the marketing/PR battlefield, Gary writes that someday he’d like to teach a graduate seminar on what they did — and how they ultimately
“The eternity of Israel shall not disappear.” --Samuel I, 15:29 “There is no Beit Midrash, without innovation (Hidush).” --Tosefta Sotah 7:9 “All things are mortal but the Jew … What is the secret of his immortality?” --Mark Twain, Concerning the Jews “It is not the strongest of species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the most adaptable.” --Leon Megginson on Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species One
Feb 2014
This blog post was originally written for the Stanford School of Education blog and reprinted with permission. Last week, my colleague, Matt Williams, wrote about productive discomfort, that is, the value of making students uncomfortable in order to promote their personal and intellectual growth. He argued that the desire to keep students comfortable stems largely from a consumerist logic in which the customer is always right even when that customer