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Dispatches from the network and updates from the Foundation.
Nov 2010
Rabbi Seth Goren is an alumnus of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship Program. Rabbi Goren serves as the Associate Chaplain and Director of Jewish Student Life at Lehigh University. He can be reached at seth.goren@lehigh.edu. As part of a course on race I was teaching a couple of years ago, we took some class time and examined a variety of media materials with an eye toward how race was reflected and
Nov 2010
Dear Fellow Jews, I never thought I would be saying this, but I think we have become too tolerant. I love my intellectual, open-minded people very much, but sometimes, (well, often), our obsessive need to consider all sides of an issue is working against us. Not every option deserves real consideration. For years we have been bending over backwards trying to make Judaism fit every different taste and 51% of
Nov 2010
Dr. Erica Brown is a faculty member of The Wexner Foundation. She is a writer and educator who works as the scholar-in-residence for the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. She is the author of several books, her latest being Confronting Scandal. Erica is the recipient of the 2009 Covenant Award for her work in education. She can be reached at erica@leadingwithmeaning.com. My first class with the Wexner Heritage Baltimore group
Nov 2010
Tobey Barus is an alumna of the Wexner Heritage Program Denver 08 Group. She is an active volunteer in the Denver Jewish community through her work with Jewish Mosaic, Allied Jewish Federation and the Jewish Community Center’s Family Programs. She can be reached at tborus@gmail.com. Last spring a census taker visited our home. (We weren’t dodging the census—it just never showed up!) As he rattled off the list of questions
Valerie Thaler, an alumna of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship Program (Class VIII), is Assistant Professor of History at Towson University in Maryland; she is also a member of the graduate faculty for the MA programs in Judaic Studies and Jewish Communal Service (affiliated with the Baltimore Hebrew Institute). Valerie can be reached at vthaler@towson.edu. The day this article was due (Oct. 22, 2010), was my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary, a
Oct 2010
Rebecca Joy Fletcher is an alumna of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship Program and a scholar and performer of international Jewish cabaret. She is also a playwright, actress, and cantor. Rebecca lives in Brooklyn, NY and can be reached at rebecca.joy@earthlink.net or www.RebeccaJoyFletcher.com. Audiences sometimes ask me how I became so passionate about cabaret. They wonder why a nice Jewish woman, a cantor at that, became enamored with the satiric, fiery,
Oct 2010
Francine Wiseman is a member of the Wexner Heritage Program, Montreal 09. She is a tax partner at Spiegel Sohmer Inc. and the President of Solomon Schechter Academy in Montreal, Quebec. Francine can be reached at fwiseman@spiegelsohmer.com. My parents separated when I was a child and I was raised by three lovable, wealthy and eccentric uncles. They had risen from the poverty of Montreal’s Main and over the years, through
Oct 2010
Jodi Mintz Ginsberg is a member of the Montreal 09 Wexner Heritage Group. She is President of Home and School Solomon Schechter Academy. Jodi is a food distributor and can be reached at jm@unifood.com. In an effort to prevent “bullying,” I was recently in school speaking to a group of grade 2 children about acts of kindness. My seven year old daughter Samantha had also taken part in this class
Oct 2010
As part of my summer reading, I picked up two books: one old, one new. My father, a retired English professor, found the first at one of my favorite used book shops: Hillel: The Book Against the Sword, written in the 1950s by Ely Pilchik, the founding director of University of Maryland Hillel. In this biographical study, Hillel the scholar comes alive with his teachings in narrative form. The second
Oct 2010
Johanna Norry is an alumna of the Wexner Heritage Program, Atlanta 05. She is currently the co- president of her synagogue’s Sisterhood, and serves on the board of Limmud Atlanta + Southeast, and has served on the boards of the Federation of Greater Jewish Atlanta and The Weber Jewish Community High School. Johanna can be reached at johannanorry@mac.com. Just over a year ago, my friend Erin made a pretty radical