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Rabbi Scott Perlo
May 16th, 2013
Holiday: Shavuot – In the Midnight Hours

ShavuotRabbi Scott Perlo is the Associate Director of Jewish Programming at Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in Washington, DC. 

Shavuot is one of those Jewish holidays that got lost.

In America, for most of the last century, celebrations of Jewish holidays have revolved around children. Until recently, most parents wouldn’t go to a synagogue for holidays unless their kids had some program. So, almost without exception, the popular Jewish holidays fall within the school year. But Shavuot typically falls in late May or early June – just after school lets out. Unless you’re real hardcore, it’s not a holiday of which you’ve heard.

Which is a shame. It’s a good one; you don’t even have to eat matzah. Read More »

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Katya Potapova
May 16th, 2013
Reflections from St. Petersburg: An Innovative Jewish Universe

In April, Team Schusterman had the chance to visit several Hillels in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kiev. We asked young leaders in each community to write about how Jewish life has changed for them. Read an introduction to this series by Schusterman President Sandy Cardin.

St. Petersburg is the Paris of the North. Actually, it’s better. And colder. It boasts what we think is the world’s worst weather and what we know is the breathtaking White Nights. It is the most snobbish, vibrant and Western-leaning city in our enormous country. We, the locals, with our opulent architecture and great restaurants, still travel to Finland five times a year to do grocery shopping and because the Fins’ gloomy Northern Art Nouveau is worth seeing. We consider ourselves Europeans, but with a harder fortune, and although we consider leaving on every rainy day, the city has caught us and never sets us free.

Our parents do not talk about the Shoah with us, not because it is difficult to find the words, but because they do not completely relate. That’s because the Jews of our city struggled through the Siege of the Leningrad along with everyone else and that is both a source of pain and pride. Our grandparents were professors, musicians and doctors—they spoke little-to-no Yiddish, even though their family names spoke for themselves.  Read More »

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Olga Bard
May 16th, 2013
Reflections from Kiev: The Quiet Revolution

In April, Team Schusterman had the chance to visit several Hillels in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kiev. We asked young leaders in each community to write about how Jewish life has changed for them. Read an introduction to this series by Schusterman President Sandy Cardin.

Being a young Jewish adult in a city with many varied ways of spending your free time can easily leave you without a “Jewish” focus. That is why when Moishe House came to Kiev in September 2010, a quiet revolution started. It was the first time young adults were creating programs for their peers, offering a pluralistic space where everyone could find their Jewish identity and explore it in their own way.

Moishe House has provided the Jewish hub and home base that neither I nor any of my Jewish friends had growing up. We come from a generation that learned about Jewish tradition at Hillel and JAFI summer camps, and then taught it to our parents. We never went to Jewish day school, but we did conduct hundreds of Shabbat services and Pesach Seders for kids and the elderly around Ukraine during our years at university. Read More »

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Yasha Moz
May 16th, 2013
Reflections from Moscow: Today Being Jewish in Russia is Something to Explore, Not Hide

In April, Team Schusterman had the chance to visit several Hillels in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kiev. We asked young leaders in each community to write about how Jewish life has changed for them. Read an introduction to this series by Schusterman President Sandy Cardin.

Ten years ago I was a university student in Ekaterinburg, Russia. Studying international relations was good, but as a local Hillel activist at the time, my most memorable education came from my involvement in Jewish life. Working at Jewish camps, going on Birthright, learning about Judaism at Hillel seminars and then sharing it with my peers and the larger community made for a very busy but also incredibly rewarding time. Still to this day, the connections I made all over the FSU form the core of my social and professional networks.

A decade later, I now live in Washington, DC, working as the Assistant Director of International Operations at Hillel International, where much of my time is focused on Jewish life in the FSU. Last month I had a déjà vu experience when I spent a week in Russia with Lynn Schusterman, meeting with students who had that familiar spark in their eyes as they talked about how a Birthright trip, leadership training program at Hillel or a homemade Shabbat dinner at Moishe House helped them connect to their own Jewish identity.  Read More »

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Sandy Cardin
May 14th, 2013
Reflections: 20 Years of Hillel in the FSU

fsu blog cropThis article is the first in a four-part series reflecting on Team Schusterman’s recent visit to the Former Soviet Union. Click the below names to read the Reflections by three young Jewish leaders:

Yasha Moz from Moscow, Olga Bard from Kiev and Katya Potapova from St. Petersburg.

In 1994, in the wake of the collapse of the former Soviet Union, Charles and Lynn Schusterman seized upon what they determined was a window of opportunity to begin rebuilding a sense of community among those whose Jewish identities had been repressed by the twin forces of the Holocaust and state-supported persecution.

The Schustermans had traveled to the region several times in the 1980’s to meet refuseniks, and they knew there was a generation of young adults, embracing new identities in the post-Soviet era, who wanted to learn about their Jewish heritage and reclaim the traditions that had been too far out of reach for far too long. Read More »

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Justin Korda
May 7th, 2013
WANTED: More Spaces to Harness Leadership Talent

roi group 2 blogThe application process for the ROI Summit is simultaneously one of the best and hardest times of the year for me – best because it reinforces the incredible young Jewish talent coming of age in communities around the world; hardest because I’m reminded that the Jewish world still does not have enough compelling opportunities to nurture all of it. Until we do, far too many young Jews who want to contribute to strengthening the Jewish future will be told “no, but” rather than “yes, and.” Faced with a negative response, many will choose to focus their time and talent elsewhere – a loss for them and for our community. Read More »

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Sandy Cardin
April 26th, 2013
Book Excerpt: Jewish Family Foundations “Come Together, Right Now”

Adobe Photoshop PDFWhat will it take to ensure a vibrant and relevant American Jewish community? It’s the question at the heart of Rabbi Sidney Schwarz’s new book, Jewish Megatrends: Charting a Course for the American Jewish Community of the 21st Century.

In the book, Schwarz and 14 leaders from all sectors across the Jewish community explore the challenges and opportunities the American Jewish community faces as it adapts to a social landscape and works to effectively engage the next generation of American Jews. Read More »

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Lisa Eisen
April 8th, 2013
Capitalizing on Innovation

CapitalizingOnInnovation

On campuses across the United States, students are exploring the diversity and vibrancy of Israel, forging connections across political and religious differences, and creating new avenues to define their relationships with Israel now and for the future.

Every year, thousands of college students return from Taglit-Birthright Israel, their interest in Israel sparked, their appetite to learn more whetted. Increasingly, these alumni — and many other young adults like them — are finding meaningful avenues to tap their new found excitement and to deepen their connection to and knowledge of contemporary Israel. Hungry to understand the country “behind the headlines” and to explore its vibrant economic and cultural landscape, students are engaging with Israel through a growing array of effective but unheralded programs that are enabling them to learn and talk about Israel in more sophisticated ways. Read More »

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Team Schusterman
April 2nd, 2013
Jerusalem Season of Culture Announces Third Annual Program

Building on a successful 2012 Season, the nonprofit Jerusalem Season of Culture will present its third annual festival from July 1 to August 23, 2013. The 2013 Season offers dozens of artistic experiences spanning the worlds of music, visual arts, culinary treats, cultural encounters, live art, social interaction, performing arts, new media and more. This summer, Jerusalem, which has served as a source of artistic inspiration for thousands of years, will once again be filled with events that challenge conventional definitions of culture and reexamine the relationship between observer, performer and location.  Read More »

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Roben Kantor
March 29th, 2013
The Promise of Passover

Passover, in many respects, is among the most accessible and relatable moments on the Jewish calendar. It invites us to immerse ourselves in the Jewish narrative in a way no other holiday does. It allows us to adapt the ritual to be relevant to our lives. And its lessons transcend far beyond the Jewish experience.

Because of these attributes, Passover has become the most well-known and widely celebrated Jewish holiday, one that continues to inspire people and in which we find new meaning year after year, even as the story itself remains largely the same.

Indeed, at the heart of Passover is a story as epic as any in the history of humankind and not just because it has all of the trappings of a Hollywood drama: It is a great story because it is timeless, as much about the future as it is about the past. Read More »

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