The Latest From The Foundation

Rachel Alexander is an alumna of The Wexner Graduate Fellowship Program (Class XIII). Rachel is currently the Midwest Regional Consultant for Jewish Federations of North America.  Rachel can be reached at Rachel.Alexander@JewishFederations.org. When I was interviewed for the Wexner Graduate Fellowship, I was asked if I would like to be entrepreneurial and create my own nonprofit or, if I was willing to work in the Belly of the Beast.  As

Charlie is an alumnus of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship, Class XVIII and the Director of Digital Engagement and Learning for The Jewish Theological Seminary.  Charlie can be reached at chschwartz@jtsa.edu.  A rather intriguing puzzle sits on my desk in the form of a sleek, black, five hundred gigabit external hard drive.  Encoded in the ones and zeros of this rather marvelous piece of hardware are nearly three decades of The

Alan is a Schusterman/Josey Professor at the University of Oklahoma. He is a Wexner Foundation faculty member and the author, most recently, of The Making of the Modern Jewish Bible (Rowman & Littlefield, 2011).  He can be reached at alevenson@ou.edu. Teaching modern Jewish history for close to thirty years, most of that time to Jewish adults, I have often been confronted by the presumption that we are inferior to our

Dan is a psychiatrist in private practice in the Detroit area.  He is an alumnus of the Detroit Wexner Heritage Program (1986).  He is on the Board of Governors of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit, The Board of JFNA, and continues as the co-chair of the Disabilities Workgroup.  He will be at ADVANCE 2011.  Dan can be reached at danguyer@aol.com At the recent Wexner Heritage Alumni Retreat in Chicago,

Susan Brous Silverman is a Wexner Heritage NY alumna.  She is the Northeast Regional Director for Friends of Yemin Orde, a residential village for at-risk youth in Northern Israel.  In her lay capacity, she oversees the Education Committee at Park Avenue Synagogue and is currently working on the  Complementary Jewish Education Wexner Affinity Group.  Susan can be reached at sbsilvermannyc@gmail.com. This past summer I was in Israel in my new

Allison is the Coordinator of the Wexner Israel Fellowship Program and is based at the Harvard Kennedy School. She can be reached at: ashapira@wexner.net I married into the Holocaust. Though I have Polish roots, my family came to the Americas before the Nazis started deporting Jews to ghettos and concentration camps. As such, while the Holocaust affected me as something that happened to my people, I never felt it as

Larry is a Wexner Heritage Milwaukee alumnus.  He is a financial advisor and a blogger for the Huffington Post and at www.larrygellman.blogspot.com. Larry now lives in Tucson and can be reached at larry.gellman@gmail.com Recently, I completed my three-year term as Chairman of the Board of CLAL, an organization that continues its legacy as the primary promoter of pluralism and the relevance of Jewish wisdom as important tools for living a

Tricia Hellman Gibbs, alumna of the 2008 San Francisco Wexner Heritage Program, is the co-founder of the San Francisco Free Clinic, a clinic providing free care to the medically-uninsured. In the fall of 2011, she will begin the Masters program in Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA. She can be reached at triciagibbs@comcast.net “He (who delights in Torah) is like a tree planted beside streams of

Pam is a Wexner Heritage Toronto alumna. She is a lawyer and artist, who now edits ”think: The Lola Stein Institute Journal” (http://www.lolastein.ca/050~Think_Magazine/). She can be reached at pamelams@mac.com. Girls are female beings, b’tzelem elokim. They are not adaptations of men. Thinking about bat mitzvah rituals, I was uncomfortable guiding my daughters towards any reworking of the male model. My sons had had b’nei mitzvah, and it felt disrespectful to

Searle, a Wexner Heritage alumnus from Baltimore, is outgoing Chair of the Jewish Federation’s Hillel Council and a Vice Chair of JESNA. A real estate and business attorney, he is the former president of the Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School and Beth Tfiloh Congregation. He can be reached at smitnick@gfrlaw.com Three years ago, I was in Hell. I managed to escape. Why would I voluntarily return in early May, 2011?