By Pamela Kekst One of the great gifts of spending this semester in Israel is being present for all the events on the Israeli calendar. Yom Hazikaron is the national Remembrance Day in Israel for fallen soldiers and victims of terror. There was no school at Hebrew University, and Nachshon Project staff helped to guide […]
By Micah Cowan The first -- and, so far, only -- time I dipped in a mikvah was on my High School’s three-month trip to Israel. As this was a post-graduation trip, this was a “Torah Lishma” trip; learning about Israel for the sake of furthering our understanding of the land, culture, and history. On […]
By Ami Nadiv Rabbi Mishael Zion– the Director of the Mandel Leadership Institute’s Program for Leadership in Israeli Jewish Culture – spoke to us this past Shabbat towards the conclusion of our unit on Jewish denominations. His shiur explored different paradigms of leadership within [Rabbinic] Judaism, and he juxtaposed the different narratives (as seen in […]
By Samantha Frankel Several weeks ago, during a conversation at dinner near Kfar Hastudentim, a fellow member of Cohort Four used an analogy to express her thoughts on Shabbaton in Jerusalem. “It’s like the entire city just takes a breath,” she said. Since then, I have thought about that analogy each week before the alarm […]
By Miriam Lichtenberg “If it’s stagnant, it’s not Halacka [Jewish law],” declared Rav Smuel Klitsner, director of the Women’s Ordination program at Midreshet Lindenbaum, a pioneering Orthodox women’s Beit Midrash in Jerusalem. The Nachshon fellows were privileged to hear from him as part of a lecture series in attempting to understand different strands of Judaism […]
By Avidan Halivni On Sunday, March 11, the Nachshon cohort had the privilege of meeting with a series of high-level professionals, each engaging in their own way with the intersection of Judaism and social justice. I came into this day eager to learn from and with accomplished and passionate individuals whose Jewish identity gave way […]
By Shachar Cohen-Hodos Our weekend in Tzfat was dedicated to the concept of holy spaces. We practiced creating a very specific kind of holy space when we made our tefillin with Rabbi Noach Greenberg, and we explored the definition of holiness itself leading up to and throughout the weekend. The definition of holiness that I […]
By Emily Dana In my family, discussions of theodicy, the conflict between the existence of God and the existence of evil in the world, come up quite often around the dinner table, and every time that they do, my grandfather brings up this quote by Marianne Moore: "Would to God that I, too, might have […]
By Pamela Kekst As part of our inspirational day learning about Tikkun Olam with Dyonna Ginsburg, Executive Director of Olam Together, our cohort heard from a panel of professionals addressing the pressing issue of African Asylum seekers in Israel. After learning all morning about the theory, career options, and Jewish texts associated with social justice […]
By Sylvie Moscovitz The Jerusalem Shabbaton was an incredible opportunity to hear from a variety of individuals of different religious backgrounds and learn about what they find most important about Jewish life. Out of all of the speakers, Rabbi Melchior’s ideas about the importance of dialogue between groups of different people in order to create […]
