8000 Walton Parkway, Suite 110
New Albany, Ohio 43054
614 939-6060
Dispatches from the network and updates from the Foundation.
Jun 2013
Josh Dinar is a Wexner Heritage Alumnus, Denver 08. Josh is the co-founder of DiningOut Magazines,and a hotel/nightclub/restaurant operator. He can be reached at josh@diningout.com. My wife’s family happened to be visiting us during Passover this year. We’d been graciously invited to several families’ celebrations, but we were a large crew – siblings, significant others, children, etc. – so crashing another dinner would have been pushing the boundaries of the
Jun 2013
Dr. Sherry Israel is a social psychologist, who was a member of the faculty of the Hornstein Program at Brandeis University from 1991 until her retirement two years ago. She has been on the faculty of the Wexner Graduate Fellows/Davidson Scholars Program Winter Institute since 2000. She can be reached at israel@brandeis.edu. A number of years ago, one of our daughters and a friend were hanging around in our living
May 2013
As part of Women’s Philanthropy from the Miami Jewish Federation Outreach project, this past Thursday more than 100 women got together to assemble 600 Deluxe Toiletries Kits that will be distributed to our Seniors and Holocaust Survivors in Miami. This was a month long effort and presented quite a challenge as we needed to collect over 5400 items. We partnered with JCS (Jewish Community Services) who highlighted this need in
May 2013
It has been thirteen years since I graduated with a degree in Jewish Communal Service as a Wexner Fellow. During this time I have sometimes struggled with guilt over my decision not to pursue my career in the Jewish world, especially since my education was paid for by the Wexner Foundation. Last summer I received tenure as a Foreign Service Officer with the US Agency for International Development, where I
May 2013
I awoke on May 14th to emails from friends and family sending me links to Angelina Jolie’s New York Times article about her decision to undergo preventive mastectomies because she is BRCA1 positive. I identified with the article because, like Jolie, knowledge of my BRCA mutation put me on a collision course with the same decision. Jolie’s announcement and the attendant flurry of media attention has brought discussions about
Last week, The Wexner Foundation held a day of activities at the Knesset to welcome the seven new Wexner Israel Fellows who will begin their studies this fall in Cambridge, MA at Harvard’s Kennedy School (HKS). Prior to the public ceremony, Deborah Housen-Couriel, Director of the Wexner Israel Fellowship Program (WIFP), held a leadership learning session. The fellows reflected on their definitions of leadership and shared their hopes and aspirations
May 2013
Go down this checklist and see if your worship community is facing the same challenges as the one in which I participate: You are growing so fast that finding appropriate spaces is a problem. 20 and 30-somethings are being drawn to your mix of innovative and accessible services and programs and spreading the word virally by social media and by word of mouth. Jews-by-choice, intermarried couples, LGBT and simply disaffected
In this season of graduations, many parents take stock of themselves. Have we conveyed good values to our children? Has our exhausting and completely love-filled child-rearing been net positive? Here are a few choice quotes from the tradition, offered by Wexner Graduate Fellowship Alum, Rabbi Justus Baird (Class 15), to help us think about the enterprise of bringing children into the world: It takes three to make a child
When the Chronicle of Philanthropy reports that 11 more wealthy individuals and families have signed on to the Giving Pledge, I am moved. Not simply because I have dedicated my professional career to the pursuit of philanthropy and making the world a better place. Or because many of those who have pledged to give away at least half of their wealth to charity – inspired by Bill and Melinda Gates’
Rabbi Judd Kruger Levingston, Ph.D., is an alumnus of The Wexner Graduate Fellowship (Class I) and serves as Director of Jewish Studies at Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy (formerly Akiba Hebrew Academy) in the Philadelphia area. He is the author of Sowing the Seeds of Character: The Moral Education of Adolescents in Public and Private Schools (Praeger/Greenwood, 2009). He is incoming Vice President of Education at the Germantown Jewish Centre.