The Latest From The Foundation

This blog post was originally written for the Stanford School of Education blog and reprinted with permission. Last week, my colleague, Matt Williams, wrote about productive discomfort, that is, the value of making students uncomfortable in order to promote their personal and intellectual growth. He argued that the desire to keep students comfortable stems largely from a consumerist logic in which the customer is always right even when that customer

It’s admissions and contracts season at Jewish Day Schools around the USA.  Do you know your attrition rate by gender?  By intellectual ability?  By learning needs?  Almost every trustee knows the proportion of students by religious affiliation and those receiving tuition support, but few understand the intellectual, academic, and emotional demographics of their student populations (i.e., gender, learning disabilities/giftedness); and fewer still are monitoring within-school-trends over time.  Without this information,

We are always looking for the next great Jewish idea. Funders are looking for innovation and originality.  Federation is often the last thing on this list.   This is unfortunate, because our Jewish communal network is the envy of every ethnic community in America. We ignore what we have: a network than can restore and revitalize communities, rescue populations in danger, absorb immigrants, and educate people returning to their Jewish

In photo: Eric Fingerhut, CEO and President of Hillel International, spoke about the challenges of leadership and his optimistic vision of the Jewish future with Wexner Graduate Fellows and Davidson Scholars at their Winter Institute. Here he engages Fellows who are interested in careers in Hillel. 
 “Having the opportunity to speak with Eric Fingerhut was especially encouraging in the midst of our days spent on leadership skills-building. Seeing that a

An excerpt from a seventeen-year-old’s college application essay: “I want to go to a college…where the academics dictate the social climate, where discourse and debate are encouraged not for the sake of convincing the other, but to teach the other, and where scholarship – my core value of Judaism – is the core value of the institution.” This was the conclusion to my answer responding to the prompt, “Why Swarthmore?”

While the American Studies Association (ASA) was deciding to help put Israel into an academic ghetto, something was happening behind our backs – something by no means insidious, but, rather, redemptive. The academic world did not stay silent. Quite the contrary. To date, twenty-five American universities have refused to join the ASA boycott. In many cases, they have also issued strongly worded protests against the Association’s actions. (Editor’s Note: this

Pictured from Left to Right: Top:  Ken Carr (WGFA,  Class 3); Ruben Posner (WGFA, Class 23); Lauren Berkun (WGFA, Class 8);  Ken Chasen (WGFA, Class 6); Andy Koren (WGFA Class 1); Elka Abrahamson, (President, The Wexner Foundation); Jason Rodich (WGFA, Class 22); Rachel Joseph (WGFA, Class 20); Michael Latz (WGFA, Class 8); Aaron Panken (WGFA, Class 8). Bottom:  Josh Fixler (WGF, Class 25); Miriam Wajnberg (WGF, Class 23); Rachel Sabath

Pictured: Washington DC 13 in Utah at the 2013 New Member Institute. The wildflower-dotted mountains of Snowbird, Utah were the perfect backdrop for the 2013 Wexner New Member Institute, but as I gazed out the clear glass expanse of the large windows to marvel at the mountains’ majesty, I couldn’t shake the woozy feeling in my head. Probably the altitude, I told myself as I heeded the urging of the

(Pictured) Some of the most influential Jewish experiences are happening in the woods, on the lake, and in the cabin – so too are some of the most impactful professional development opportunities. Last Shabbat I danced Israeli rikkud with 300 teens on the banks of the Delaware River in New York. A week later I joined a different set of campers in song and prayer deep in the woods of

Most children are not enthralled about going to Hebrew school. Imagine my son’s reaction when I told him last year that he’d be going to not one, but two, Hebrew schools each week.  To be fair, neither of the programs is actually called Hebrew school. The first is at our conservative synagogue and is called Machanei Shai because the program is structured much like a camp with activities such as