Shmita, Israeli Elections, Pesach: The Wexner Foundation’s 2015 Videoconference Schedule (With More to Come)

(Pictured) Learning from anywhere in the world, even outer space. (Is George Clooney an alum?)

Please mark your calendars for the following interactive videoconference sessions, which will begin with 18 minutes of concentrated teaching and then allow for up to 18 minutes of questions and discussion.  (Bios at the end) .

36 Minutes LIVE: 2015

Thursday, February 12

9:00 am PST – 12:00 pm EST – 7:00 pm Israel time
Nadav Tamir
“A Forecast on the Upcoming Israeli Elections 2015 and Potential Implications”
Click here to RSVP and receive “dial-in” instructions.

Wednesday, March 18
9:00 am PST – 12:00 pm EST – 7:00 pm Israel time
Colonel (Res.) Miri Eisen
“Israeli Elections The Day After: What Happens Now?”
Click here to RSVP and receive dial-in instructions.

36 Minutes LIVE: PESACH

Our own version of March Madness. In addition to the session on the Israeli election results with Col. (Res.) Miri Eisen (above), we will also hold a series in March with some deep learning to prepare for Pesach. 

Wednesday, March 11th
9:00 am PST – 12:00 pm EST – 6:00 pm Israel time
Dr. Erica Brown
“Seder Talk”
Click here to RSVP and receive dial-in instructions. 

Wednesday, March 25th
7:30 am PST – 10:30 am EST – 5:30 pm Israel time
Rabbi David Ingber
“A Chasidic Reading of the Plagues”
Click here to RSVP and receive dial-in instructions.

And More to Come Throughout the Year

Please click through on the upcoming events each week when you receive your WexnerLEADS or join our Facebook group for Wexner Members and all Alumni to view up-to-the-minute events and learning opportunities that The Wexner Foundation provides throughout the year. For example the series 36 Minutes LIVE: Elul will be back and feature such scholars as Frederic Brenner…with more to come throughout the year.

Tech and RSVP Information

We will be using a new technology called Zoom, which is similar to Skype and Google Hangout. Zoom allows for up to 100 people to participate and is free to use. You will need to be at a computer, iPad or smartphone with internet, camera, mic and speakers to participate fully. If you don’t have a camera or mic at your computer, you can still “zoom in” – as long as you have internet and speakers you will be able to listen in, just like a conference call. You can dial in from a phone and will be in “listen only mode”.  To register and receive instructions and texts which will be used during some of the sessions, please email Aliza Storchan.  You can register for as many sessions as you like.  Please mention in your RSVP which sessions specifically you plan to attend.  As registration is limited to 100 participants each session, please register only for the sessions you are certain to attend.

Past videoconferences from 2015

Thursday, January 29
10:00 am PST – 1:00 pm EST – 8:00 pm Israel time
Professor Alon Tal
“Towards a Jewish Environmental Agenda for the Shmita Year 5775”

 Recordings can be found by scrolling through  https://www.wexnerfoundation.org/newsite/resources/videos

Bios

Professor Alon Tal‘s career has been a balance between academia and public interest advocacy.   A professor at Ben Gurion University today, Dr. Tal was the founding director of Adam Teva V’din, the Israel Union for Environmental Defense from 1990-1997, a leading public interest law group, and was chairman of Life and Environment, an umbrella group for eighty environmental organizations in Israel from 1998-2003.  Between 2010-2013 he served as chair of Israel’s green party.  Tal currently is a member of the international board of directors of the Jewish National Fund, where he has served as chairman of the committee for land development that oversees forestry and land reclamation. In 1996 Dr. Tal founded the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, a graduate studies center in which Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian students join environmentalists from around the world in an advanced interdisciplinary research program. He won the life achievement award from the Ministry of Environment on Israel’s 60th anniversary at age 48.

Nadav Tamir (WIFA, Class 15) is currently Director of International Policy and Government Affairs at Peres & Associates Global Advisory LTD. He has held several prominent positions in the Israeli government, including Senior Policy Advisor to the President of Israel during the last three years of the presidency of Shimon Peres and Consul General of Israel to New England in Boston, MA. Since joining the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1993, he has had the privilege to serve as a policy assistant under Ehud Barak and David Levy.  In 2003, Nadav was chosen as a Wexner Israel Fellow and earned his Masters in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 2004. Prior to joining the Ministry he served as a security officer at the Residence of the President of the State of Israel, while simultaneously earning his BA in Philosophy and Political Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, from which he graduated Magna Cum Laude.  He was born and raised on Kibbutz Manara in northern Israel.  His career in public service began in 1980 while serving in the IDF, where he eventually served as a company commander and retired with the rank of Major. He is married to Dr. Ronit Tamir and is the father of Maya, Ido and Naama.

Col. (Res.) Miri Eisin served in the Israeli intelligence community and retired from active duty at the rank of full colonel in 2004. Over her twenty-year career in the military she served as the deputy head of the combat intelligence corps, the personal assistant to the Director of Military Intelligence and as the intelligence officer in combat units and research departments. After retiring from the military Miri served as the Israeli Prime Minister’s international media advisor from the second Lebanon war until the end of 2007. Over the last ten years Miri has been one of Israel’s main presenters, speaking on regional geo-politics and security-related issues in the media worldwide. She teaches at the Inter-disciplinary Center in Herzeliya, and works extensively with the media, student groups and diplomats. Miri is a fellow at the Center for International Communication at Bar Ilan University. Miri holds a BA from Tel Aviv University in Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science, an MA from Haifa University in Security Studies and is a graduate of the Israeli national defense college. In addition to her public advocacy activities, Miri is on the boards of the Israeli NDU alumni, Ramat Hasharon community centers and Takdim, Israel’s first community foundation. Miri also happens to be married to Wexner Israel Fellowship alum Gillad Eisen (Class 16).

Dr. Erica Brown is a writer and educator who works as the scholar-in-residence for The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington and consultant for the Jewish Agency and other Jewish non-profits. Erica’s latest book is Seder Talk. Recent other publications include Happier Endings: A Meditation on Life and Death (Simon & Schuster) and Leadership in the Wilderness: Authority and Anxiety in the Book of Numbers. Erica writes a monthly column for The New York Jewish Week and the website Psychology Today and writes a weekly column for JTA on Jewish leadership. She was a Jerusalem Fellow, is a faculty member of The Wexner Foundation, an Avi Chai Fellow, winner of the Ted Farber Professional Excellence Award, recipient of the 2009 Covenant Award for her work in education, and winner of the 2011 Bernie Reisman Award for Jewish Communal Service (Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership Program, Brandeis University). Erica has degrees from Yeshiva University, University of London, Harvard University and Baltimore Hebrew University. She lectures widely on subjects of Jewish interest and leadership and writes a weekly internet essay called “Weekly Jewish Wisdom.” She tweets daily on one page of the Talmud@DrEricaBrown and tweets an inspirational quote or question called Happier Days. 

Rabbi David Ingber promotes a renewed Jewish mysticism that integrates meditative mindfulness and physical awareness into a unique and transformational blend of neo-chassidic, post-modern Judaism. A major 21st Century Jewish thinker and educator – teaching at such places as Pardes, the Jewish Theological Seminary, NYU and Columbia University – his rich perspective, open heart and mind, and full-bodied approach to Jewish learning has brought him to speak throughout North America, Europe and Israel. He is the Founder and Rabbi at Romemu, an unabashedly eclectic and fast-growing congregation in New York City, which seeks to  infuse traditional liturgy and learning with the energy of ecstatic chant, silence, dance, yoga and meditation. Fusing Jewish mysticism and Chassidut with those of other ancient philosophies and world views such as integral philosopher Ken Wilber, Rabbi David also sits on the Board of Directors of Aleph and Synagogue 3000 Next Dor’s Working Group of Sacred Emergent Communities, where he also continues to teach.  Raised Modern Orthodox in New York, Rabbi David studied at several distinguished yeshivot in Jerusalem and New York including Yeshiva University, Beit Midrash L’Torah, Yeshivat Chaim Berlin, and Yeshivat Chovovei Torah Rabbinical School, and received smicha from Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Founder of Renewal Judaism.