The Latest From The Foundation

I felt lost when I learned of my dad’s late-stage cancer diagnosis. Despite having a top team of doctors battling his disease, I knew that prayer was my only weapon in this fight.  I couldn’t shake the feeling, though, that there was more we could be doing.  Our sages teach that repentance, prayer and charity can remove an evil decree.  My father has always modeled that charity encompasses good deeds,

From 1958 to 1971 around Sukkot Israelis from all different segments of society used to go on a two-day walk from Beit Shemesh to Jerusalem.  The 30-kilometer walk was connected to the ancient custom of making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times a year — on Passover, Sukkot and Shavuot.  Before there were social networks or even the term “networking”, Israelis would get to know about different Israeli life experiences

Shalom all — Thank you all for responding to our Wexner Hospitality app survey!  We had 137 respondents, both North American and Israeli.  We are listening.  Our Wexner Summit working group has been hard at work this summer exploring options for powering our vision to build an online platform for North American and Israeli Wexner alumni (and others) to connect IRL (“in real life”) when we are traveling in each

SparkShare: Identifying positive opportunities for at-risk youth in the Boston area I. Introduction SparkShare focuses on increasing youth opportunities based on understanding individual and group experiences that they see as holding them back, helping them realize that they are in charge of their future, and forming strategic partnerships to support them and build change. This case study describes the basis for establishing a new organization in Boston, the steps that

Where’s George? An online Campaign to Pressure JNF to Provide Transparency About Its Funding I. Introduction – In 2015, T’ruah: The Rabbinic call for Human Rights, decided to run a campaign targeting JNF-USA for providing support to Israeli settlements in the Territories and for obscuring this fact from its North American donors. This case describes how T’ruah chose and carried out an advocacy campaign aimed simultaneously at making policy change and

ReachOut! is A Project of the JCRC of Boston I.     Introduction: A New Program for Engaging Jewish Young Adults in Community Service ReachOut! is a program created by the Jewish Community Relations Council (“JCRC”) of Boston in 2010 for the purpose of engaging Jewish young adults in their 20’s and 30’s in meaningful community service.  The JCRC believed that participation in such service could become a transformative rite of passage

Our “Stronger Together” Wexner Summit working group identified the lack of institutional recognition and tolerance of non-orthodox Jewish ritual, practices and beliefs in Israel as one important factor wearing away the North American Jewish Community’s feeling of connection to Israel.  Our concern was actually twofold — from the Israeli perspective, Israel was illustrating a true lack of religious freedom for non-orthodox Jews and creating a distancing of non-orthodox Israeli Jews from

The P2P (People to People) working group from the Wexner Summit “Stronger Together” has been busy working on multiple projects that connect Israelis and North American Jews.   While at the Summit, we realized what a gift it was that alumni from four of the Wexner programs were meeting and working together.  Right there, within the Summit group, was a P2P experience.  To expand on that and utilize the potential

On August 23, 1950, the President of the American Jewish Committee and US industrialist Jacob Blaustein visited Israel.  In an historic meeting at the King David hotel in Jerusalem, Ben Gurion and Blaustein issued statements expressing their mutual understanding about the relationship of American Jews and Israel, in what became known as the Blaustein-Ben Gurion accord.  Three issues were at the focus of that accord — representation, dual loyalty and Aliyah.