The Latest From The Foundation

The following is a letter that Rabbi Elka Abrahamson, President of The Wexner Foundation, shared with the second cohort of the Wexner Service Corps, our Columbus-based teen service-learning initiative, on their final night of their Jewish service-learning trip to New Orleans last week: Dear Wexner Service Corps! I have to be in New York first thing tomorrow morning for an all day meeting and the last flight out meant my reluctant

In my 1999 Wexner Graduate Fellowship application, I shared my dream to “open a group home and multi-service agency for Jews with developmental disabilities that would provide therapies, as well as social, religious, educational and recreational programming, vocational training and job placements.”  15 years ago, I could not have known that my quest would ultimately lead me to a community that was enabled by a Wexner Heritage alumnus with a

On June 2, 2014, Professor Deborah E. Lipstadt, Ph.D., who has served as a faculty member for all three Wexner leadership programs, spoke at the Dedication of the Holocaust Memorial at the Ohio Statehouse. Deborah was introduced by Leslie H. Wexner; other speakers included Governor John R. Kasich and architect of the memorial, Daniel Libeskind. Here are her remarks: Thank you to my friend and compatriot Les Wexner for that

No one ever described high school as the ‘best four years of your life.’  The pressure to fit in is tremendous, and gearing up for college can be overwhelming.  This is also when Jewish involvement plummets among non-orthodox teenagers, following the bar/bat mitzvah.  BBYO is working (and succeeding) at reversing this trend.  What’s our ‘secret sauce’?  We draw teens in through social experiences. They then develop authentic relationships which become

Reprinted with permission from Sh’ma: A Journal of Jewish Ideas (www.shma.com) May 2014 issue, as part of a larger conversation about self and community.  How can it be that the most narcissistic, self-absorbed, self-indulgent, materialistic generation that the world has ever known is also capable of causing social revolutions in any number of countries and mobilizing the masses in countless political campaigns — perhaps even saving the planet from environmental

Pictured: Israeli-Angelinos at a Tzav8 rally in Los Angeles, home to the largest  Israeli population outside of Israel.  A couple of weeks ago I was invited to participate in a conference titled “The Global Israeli Leadership Summit” in London. The conference was a gathering of Israeli community leaders in the Diaspora and brought together Israelis living in 13 different countries for a summit aimed at strengthening Israeli communities outside of

From Left to Right: Avi Narrow-Tilonsky (Class 20); Esther Reed (Class 9); Elana Paru, (Class 7); Ami Hersh (Class 19); Lucy Tannen (Class 1). The following remarks were given at the 2014 Wexner Graduate Fellowship Alumni Institute Opening Session  in Glen Cove, NY. I met Phil Miller (WGFA Class 2), just a year ago, when the Wexner Mentoring Program commenced.  I had no idea what to expect from him, or

Those of us, both professionals and volunteers, who seek to serve Jewish life are increasingly dependent upon reliable data and sound evidence to do our work well. While more and more information swirls about us, we have all too little understanding of how it is generated, produced, distributed and accessed. Our colleagues at the AVI CHAI Foundation asked for our assistance in trying to better understand what knowledge sources guide your work, and in particular

Marketing expert Gary Wexler published an article this week in which he delineates 10 marketing challenges the BDS movement has thrown up for those who are working to counter it. Acknowledging how formidable a foe the BDS movement is to those would like to meet them on the marketing/PR battlefield, Gary writes that someday he’d like to teach a graduate seminar on what they did — and how they ultimately

“The eternity of Israel shall not disappear.” –Samuel I, 15:29 “There is no Beit Midrash, without innovation (Hidush).” –Tosefta Sotah 7:9 “All things are mortal but the Jew … What is the secret of his immortality?” –Mark Twain, Concerning the Jews “It is not the strongest of species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the most adaptable.” –Leon Megginson on Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species One