8000 Walton Parkway, Suite 110
New Albany, Ohio 43054
614 939-6060
Dispatches from the network and updates from the Foundation.
May 2016
Last fall while in New York, my wife Michelle (WHP alum, Dallas 13) and I had lunch with Angie Atkins (Director, Wexner Heritage Alumni). She asked me what I was up to and I told her I had an idea for a multi-faith garden project and would let her know if anything came of it… Something happened! First, my own synagogue in Plano, Texas, Congregation Anshai Torah, agreed to participate.
May 2016
Left to Right: Ruthie Warshenbrot (Staff, WGF Class 23), Stefanie Zelkind (Staff, WGF Class 16), Jay Moses (Staff, WGF Class 5), Ann Luban (WGF Class 4 and WHP Chicago Pro-99), Elana Paru (WGF Class 7) and Ben Berger (Staff) at the JPRO Conference. Hundreds of Jewish communal professionals gathered this week in Columbus, Ohio for JPRO 2016, a conference sponsored by the JPRO Network, the professional association for Jewish communal
May 2016
I entered the Wexner Heritage program as a passionate lay leader, thirsty for knowledge and innovative thinking. By the end of the program, I was ready to take my leadership experience to the next level, and I began to explore the impact I could have as a Jewish professional. My Wexner experience opened doors and provided me with the luxury of interviewing with top leadership of a variety of Jewish
May 2016
Wexner Israel Fellows (Class 27) and Elisha Gechter, Program Manager, Wexner Israel Programs studying hard for finals. Arriving at Harvard I felt like Alice in Wonderland. It was as if a whole world beyond my imagination was unfolding before my eyes. Down the rabbit hole I went, as did all 7 of my classmates in the Israel Fellowship (Class 27). While we were diving into concepts and ideas, new doors
May 2016
Reprinted with permission from Mayyim Hayyim. You see blood and it changes everything. You go from being unharmed to wounded, from ritually ready (tahor) to ritually unready (tameh), and sometimes from being pregnant to losing that pregnancy. And that’s what happened to me — at 10 weeks pregnant, responding to a middle of the night cry from my three-and-a-half year old and then dashing to the bathroom before popping back
May 2016
May 2016
I published a book this past December called The Lieberman Case – The Indictment That Was Never Served, documenting how Avigdor Lieberman, head of the Yisrael Beyteinu party, an MK and twice Minister of Foreign Affairs, maintained questionable connections with multimillion dollar corporations that he had owned previously. The police gathered overwhelming evidence proving that, for more than a decade (from 1998-2009) while Lieberman served in various portfolios in the Israeli government, vast amounts of
May 2016
About ten years ago, I was having my regular Indian lunch with Artie Isaac (WHP alum, Columbus 00), when he suggested that I come to a Torah study class being led by Danny Maseng, who was serving as artist-in-residence at Temple Israel in Columbus, Ohio. With the possible exception of some of my family members, no one before Danny and no one since has had such a meaningful impact on
May 2016
May 2016
Many years ago, my mother, a survivor of Auschwitz who lost her parents and all but one of her eleven siblings in the camps, did a videotaped testimony for Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation. I recall her exclamations on the phone at the beginning of the process: “Larry, I got a letter from Steven Spielberg, I got a letter from Steven Spielberg!” As the taping approached, my mother was almost trembling