12
Aug 2021
Cost: A Conversation About People Not Dollars
Pilot WFF and WGF/DS Alum Jennifer Weinstock (Class 26)
I don’t have any easy solutions and yet I hope that the lessons we have learned from this pandemic will push us all to think in new ways about old problems. Let’s commit to radical accessibility, radical welcoming, and making it as easy and compelling to opt into Jewish life as it is to visit a museum in Denmark in pajamas.
Caught off guard, and not sure that as a 24-year-old graduate student I was in a position to opine authoritatively about the Jewish future, I tossed out the first coherent thought I could generate: “I think the Jewish community of the future will be smaller and also more intensely Jewish.”
Jews around the world expect Israel to be a country where Jewish education and the price of living a Jewish life is included in the package. From a distance, it appears to be so.
22
Jul 2021
Wexner Alumni in Israel Assume New Roles
We're kvelling with the recent appointments and awards given to Wexner Senior Leaders and Wexner Israel Fellowship Alumni in Israel.
Welcome Tonda! The Jews of Color cohort, launching this fall, will be coordinated by a newly engaged educational consultant and leadership development professional, Tonda Case.
12
Jul 2021
A Conversation on Trauma
WIF Alum Esti Ben-Artzi Bitton (Class 9) and Deputy Director Dana Savoray-Hadar
A gradual return is extremely important as it is what lets us process the events. If we plunge back into our normal routine, the outcome is amnesia of sorts. We delete the events from our minds without having processed them properly and it might meet us unprepared next time.
It can be comforting to hear that what we feel is timeless, a universal and inevitable aspect of the human experience. Sometimes, a quiet moment with a line of ancient poetry or prayer can be just the salve.
I watched him change daily. As he became physically weaker, he also became luminous, glowing, and the fullest, truest, most beautiful version of himself. It was a sacred privilege to accompany him on this journey. With clarity, consistency, and honesty, we shared miraculous moments and found beauty in unexpected places.
Judaism teaches us that within loss there is joy, and within joy there is loss. So, my friends, be kind to yourselves as we accept and mourn all of these losses, and take our first tentative steps towards joy, individually and communally.
Our tradition requires us to honor loss, to share loss, to memorialize loss, to let suffering speak and to build rituals around loss. And, at the right moment, to find hope despite loss, and even to find hope in loss.
