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Dispatches from the network and updates from the Foundation.
Jun 2009
Allison Shapira is coordinator of the Wexner Israel Fellowship Program based at the Harvard Kennedy School in Cambridge, MA. She can be reached at: ashapira@wexner.net It is 5 minutes before 8 AM on a dark morning in Rehovot, Israel. As if on cue, 5 silver cars pull silently up to the curb outside a small house that is covered in ivy. Like clowns in a circus, people start piling out
Jun 2009
Rhona Edelbaum Sloan is an alumna of the Wexner Heritage Program from San Francisco, is the President of the Board of the Holocaust Center of Northern California and can be reached at rhonaedelbaum@yahoo.com. Shortly before graduating from the Wexner Heritage Program in 2008, I felt a kinship to Moses in his initial reluctance to accept G-d’s leadership plan. My husband had been the Board President of the Holocaust Center of
Jun 2009
Rachel Tasch is an alumna of the Wexner Heritage Program from San Francisco, serves as President of Congregation Beth Am, a Reform community in Los Altos Hills, CA. She can be reached at rtasch@earthlink.net. I was about to take on the most significant leadership role in my Jewish journey so far – President of a large congregation. So many logistical details – writing a speech, ensuring a 20% quorum for
Josh Fine is a member of the Wexner Heritage Program in Denver. He is a co-founder of Minyan Na’aleh, a grassroots, independent minyan, and is Vice President & General Counsel of Focus Property Group, a Denver-based commercial real estate development company. He can be reached at jfine1024@yahoo.com. Reading Parashat Beha’alotkha, I couldn’t help doing a double take. Chapters 8, 9 and 10 of Numbers describe a God miraculously present in
Galina Leytes and her husband Lev are Wexner Heritage alumni from the Bay Area. Galina is on the Board of the San Francisco Jewish Community Federation and Lev is on the boards of private and public foundations. They also provide management consulting to companies. They can be reached at galinal@generation-capital.com “This is a most creative and original approach to solve one of the key pressing issues of our times and
May 2009
Rabbi Michael Adam Latz, an alumnus of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship Program, is the founding rabbi of Kol HaNeshamah in West Seattle, Washington. He is returning to his hometown of Minneapolis next month to assume the pulpit at Shir Tikvah Congregation. He can be reached at malatz@comcast.net It was the height of the rabbinic “busy season” (when isn’t it, really?), September of 2006. I was working the usual “insane” hours
Mara Benjamin, an alumna of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship Program (Class 10), received her Ph.D. in modern Jewish thought from Stanford University. She is Assistant Professor of Religion at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN. Her first book, Rosenzweig’s Bible: Reinventing Scripture for Jewish Modernity, was published in March by Cambridge University Press. She lives with her partner and daughter in St. Paul, Minnesota and can be reached at mbenj@stolaf.edu.
May 2009
Donna Gerson is a member of the Pittsburgh 07 Wexner Heritage Class. She is a contributing editor for Student Lawyer magazine, an American Bar Association publication, and also writes for Thomson Reuters. She can be reached at donna@donnagerson.com In March, my husband and I quit the Conservative shul that we belonged to for nearly 10 years. While the popular (but banal) aphorism – “winners never quit and quitters never
Rabbi Laura Sheinkopf, an alumna of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship Program (Class 9), is a graduate of Hebrew Union College and Columbia University. Raised and educated in Massachusetts, she now lives in Houston, she is a writer, a teacher and the mother of two. She can be reached at rabbilms@yahoo.com In this week’s Torah portion, we read about “the Shabbat of the land,” otherwise known as Shmitah, when the Torah
May 2009
Lisa Grushcow, an alumna of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship Program (Class 12), serves as Associate Rabbi of Congregation Rodeph Sholom in New York City. She was ordained by HUC-JIR and received her doctorate from Oxford University. She can be reached at rabbigrushcow@crsnyc.org My annual seder table question is simple but good. “Here’s what I want you to bring,” I tell my guests in advance. “Bring something that represents freedom to