The Latest From The Foundation

  Pictured: Yehuda Bernstein and Mijal Bitton  at the final Wexner Graduate Fellowship Institute Class 24 in Sanibel, Florida Wrapping up our last class workshop as participants in the Wexner Graduate Fellowship on Wednesday morning, I couldn’t help feeling as blue as the clear waters of the Sanibel coast. Each of my classmates had accomplished great things over the past four years. All had contributed in one way or another

Rabbi Seth Goren (WGFA, Class 16) wrote an op-ed this week about the Jewish legacy of the Civil Rights Movement, and what its leaders teach him about how to live in 2015. Reprinted with permission from the Jewish Exponent. Of the many memorializations of the civil rights movement, among the most familiar to Jews is a photograph of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

(Pictured) Rabbi Jill Jacobs (WGFA, Class 11), Rabbi Shai Held (WGFA, Class 7), and Rabbi David Rosenn (WGFA, Class 5) moments before arrest, sitting down on 96th Street and Broadway Thursday evening, December 4, 2014, Jewish leaders and organizations called for a protest on the Upper West Side of Manhattan “to rectify the structural injustices that give rise to the daily violations of the dignity of our fellow citizens of

Pictured: US Supreme Court Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan had a lively conversation moderated by Nina Totenberg at the 2014 JFNA GA.  The Wexner Foundation brought Wexner Graduate Fellow Classes 24 and 25 and Wexner Israel Fellowship Class 26 to this year’s JFNA General Assembly.  As a group, we gathered for meals and to reflect throughout on the entire experience, from the plenaries to the individual sessions.  Participants

Twenty-five years have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Erected in 1961, it stood less than a kilometer from where I sit now. The end of the Cold War destabilized Jewish identities and politics around the world. I still recall marching on Washington in 1987 to “free” Soviet Jewry.  In a matter of moments, that sacred mission, which had been a cornerstone of American Jewish life, no longer

True to its name, a mission is extremely purpose-driven, and superbly intense. It jam-packs past, present, future, fear, uncertainty and hope, and you come home reeling and exhausted from a sensory and emotional overload. None of this is negative — it is usually a self-and-community-transforming-event that you slowly unpack and savor for some time thereafter. My husband Robert and I very recently had the privilege to lead approximately 50 fellow Miamians

Paris is home to 300,000 of France’s 600,000 Jews. Anti-Semitism is being fomented by a dangerous “cocktail” composed of radical Muslims along with, increasingly, those on the far left who were inflamed by the Gaza conflict. We went to show support and understand the unique strengths and vulnerabilities of the French Jewish community, which actually dates back nearly 2,000 years. Going beyond the terrifying headlines from this past summer, we

In the wake of Rabbi Barry Freundel’s recent arrest for voyeurism in a D.C. mikvah, many of our alumni are publishing deep analyses and ideas for how to prevent future abuses. One such article was written by Dr. Sharon Weiss-Greenberg (WGFA, Class 20) and is reprinted here with permission from The Jewish Week. Feel free to add your thoughts below in the comments section or post other article links you

The 2014 siyum (culmination ceremony) of the Wexner Heritage Program was historic. It marked the graduation of 20 extraordinary North American Jewish leaders, all born in the Former Soviet Union. The Wexner Heritage Program has had Russian-born members take part in previous Heritage classes.  These few individuals represented the tiny percentage of the few Russian Jews who had become involved with the Jewish community and Jewish communal leadership. For more

To unravel the complexity of our Wexner Graduate Fellowship Summer Institute’s theme, fellows had to explore the personal and communal implications of Jewish “obligation.” With so many fellows in disagreement about whether their Jewishness and Jewish leadership necessarily implied a theologically, culturally or historically driven sense of obligation, it was challenging to create frameworks for our conversations. Amazingly enough, though, as the institute drew to a close with preparations for