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Dispatches from the network and updates from the Foundation.
Nov 2009
David Abramowitz is an alumnus of the Wexner Heritage Program. He is the Executive Director of Jewish Leadership Institute, a Jewish identity-building and leadership creation program for college and graduate students. He can be reached at jli18@juno.com. Jacob is a complex character. We like “complex.” It denotes an intricacy that leads us to use our best analytical skills. The problem is that Jacob is also complicated. “Complicated” leads to, well,
Nov 2009
Matthew Bronfman is an alumnus of the Wexner Heritage Program from NY and Chairman of the International Steering Committee of Limmud FSU. Our most recent Limmud was July 1-3 in Jerusalem, for Russian speaking Israelis. In all, we will have 5 Limmuds this year for Russian speaking Jews in the US, Israel, Ukraine and Russia. I became involved in this project 4 years ago when I was in Cordoba, Spain
Nov 2009
Rabbi Shoshana Boyd Gelfand is an alumna of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship Program (Class 1). She is Executive Director of the Movement for Reform Judaism in the UK. In some ways, it was inevitable that Limmud and Wexner would intersect one day. They are, in some ways, like twins separated at birth; similar genetics, but different upbringings. For example, they differ significantly in their target audiences: Wexner is unabashedly elite,
Nov 2009
Jay Moses is an alumnus of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship Program. Jay is the Director of the Wexner Heritage Program in the Foundation’s New York office. He can be reached at jmoses@wexner.net Our armored bus rolled through the desert and turned in to the winding streets of Hevron. Wexner Heritage members and spouses were spending a day exploring the issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Home to over
Dr. Erica Brown is the Director for Adult Education at The Partnership for Jewish Life and Learning and the consultant for The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. Erica is the author of the book, Inspired Jewish Leadership, a National Jewish Book Award finalist and Spiritual Boredom, and co-author of The Case for Jewish Peoplehood (all through Jewish Lights). Erica is the recipient of the 2009 Covenant Award for her work
Nov 2009
Rabbi Jethro Berkman is a Wexner Graduate Fellowship alumnus. He teaches Tanakh and creates experiential education programs at Gann Academy – The New Jewish High School of Greater Boston. He can be reached at jethroberkman@yahoo.com During my last two years of rabbinical school I worked as the Jewish Student Advisor at Swarthmore College. As the only official Jewish presence on campus, I had a wonderful opportunity to exercise leadership and
Dr. Jennie Rosenfeld is an alumna of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship (Class 14). Jennie made aliyah last year and is currently a Junior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute where she is writing a book on sexual ethics for Orthodox singles, and a Talmud teacher at Havruta, the Bet Medrash for students of the Hebrew University. She can be reached at eishlavan@hotmail.com I didn’t anticipate linking my thoughts on the
Sacha Litman is an alumnus of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship Program. He is the Founder and Principal Consultant of Measuring Success, a strategy consulting firm dedicated to developing quantitative tools and models to enhance organizational effectiveness. Sacha can be reached at: sacha@measuring-success.com. As organizations I work with suffer losses in membership, enrollment, or donors; I hear time and time again that it is out of their hands. The conclusion tends
Oct 2009
Rabbi Brett Krichiver is a Wexner Graduate Fellowship Alumnus. Brett is the Senior Jewish Educator for Hillel at UCLA. He can be reached at brett@uclahillel.org. Recently I was reminded of a famous statement made by Abraham Joshua Heschel: “What we need more than anything else is not textbooks but textpeople. It is the personality of the teacher that the pupils read, the text they will never forget.” I find this
Oct 2009
We at the Foundation have long known that Wexner constituents thrive on innovation. Whether it’s the leadership aspect, the confidence that comes with a strong Jewish identity, the exposure to other innovators, or all of the above, Wexner alumni are often at the forefront of new ideas to impact the Jewish world. We are pleased to profile below 3 Wexner alumni, representing each of the Wexner leadership initiatives, who have