Changing the World at Yeshiva University (Mitzpeh.com, May 2012)
Students at Yeshiva University aren’t waiting to make an impact around the world. Through the university’s Center for the Jewish Future, they are embracing service learning as a responsibility of their Jewish faith. The center matches students with programs that aim to build leadership skills by working with disaffected youth, teaching English and building learning centers on mission trips to Israel, Nicaragua, Haiti, Germany, Mexico, Brazil and the United Kingdom.
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Alternative Break Interview: Yehudit Goldberg on AJWS in Nicaragua
A Search for Definition: My Journey on Limmud NY 2012 (Commentator, March 2012)
On January 13, during a winter break half as short as most colleges’,
YU’s Center for the Jewish Future (CJF) sent ten students as a
delegation to Limmud NY, a pluralistic, all-ages conference in upstate
New York. The CJF additionally sent students on humanitarian missions to
Mexico, Nicaragua, and the Ukraine, on chessed missions to Israel, and
on a coast-to-coast journey in the USA. These missions all contained
community service and had elements of social justice, though that’s not
to say that those who travelled on Limmud did not play a role in social
change. I found that going on Limmud, which may not have involved
groundbreaking, physical work or sparking immediate social change, was
incredibly important both for other Jewish denominations and for Modern
Orthodoxy.
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OHDS students get schooled on Jewish view of social protest (jWeekly.com, January 2012)
What does political upheaval look like when viewed through a Jewish
lens? Does protest carry particular responsibilities and prohibitions
for the observant Jew? And how do the Torah and the commentaries help
shape social consciousness?
Students from Yeshiva University, the flagship school of the Modern
Orthodox movement in New York City, brought these kinds of
thought-provoking questions to seventh- and eighth-graders at Oakland
Hebrew Day School Jan. 17 and then worked with them to hash out answers,
framed by the events of the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street
movements.
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Kohelet Kickoff Event (The
Margolin Hebrew Academy / Feinstone Yeshiva of the South Blog, October 2011)
Our second year in the Kohelet Fellowship Program officially kicked off on Monday with an orientation program at the JCC. The program, funded by the Kohelet Foundation, provides tuition incentives to parents who participate in one of two adult education programs: the Jewish Learning Institute run by Chabad or the Kohelet Conversations peer study program created by Yeshiva University's Center for the Jewish Future.
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Coping With Irene's Wrath: New Yorkers Tell Their Stories (Jewish Press, August 2011)
As Hurricane Irene barreled toward
New York late last week, city officials, still smarting over what
critics called a tentative response to the great blizzard of 2010, acted
proactively, shutting down mass transit and ordering a mandatory
evacuation in zones expected to be directly in the path of the massive
storm.
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Darfur refugee encounters compassionate counsellors on YU Counterpoint Israel program (Canadian Jewish Tribune, August 2011)
JERUSALEM – You can easily spot Yismael among the other immigrant
campers. He carries a notebook and incessantly jots new words that he
learns in English and Arabic. Unlike his fellow campers who periodically
visit their parents who live in Israel, Yismael hasn’t seen his parents
for two years – his parents live in a refugee camp in Chad.
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A Roundup Of Education News
In the coming weeks, some undergraduate students and rabbinical
students at Yeshiva University will be studying the works of political
thinkers like Thomas Paine and John Locke, and the words of such
scholars as Maimonides and Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin, focusing
on the intersection of Jewish philosophy and Western society.
Later in this academic year, a score of graduate-level students will
take part in a weeklong seminar, under the auspices of Yeshiva
University’s Center for the Jewish Future, focusing on “experiential
Jewish education,” which is often known as informal Jewish education.
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Local teens volunteer at Israeli camps (NJ Jewish Standard, August 2011)
Elianna Wolf of Passaic hopes to be a psychologist. Her experience
running a day camp for underprivileged kids in the Israeli development
town of Arad this summer has provided a sharper focus for her dream. “I have a newfound knowledge of what it’s like for teens going
through hard self-esteem issues, specifically in these poor communities
where they’re embarrassed about their families and backgrounds,” said
Wolf, a rising junior at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University.
“A lot of my students said negative things about themselves. In the
future, I really want to work on that self-esteem issue with teens.”
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Deity dilemma: 'God doubters' look for place in Jewish life (Jweekly.com, August 2011)
Jewish atheism can serve a purpose by pushing Jews to demand meaning from
their faith and its leaders, says Rabbi Kenneth Brander, dean of Yeshiva
University's Center for the Jewish Future. Paraphrasing Rabbi Abraham Isaac
Kook, the first Ashkenazi ...
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Counterpoint Israel Reaches Israeli Youth (5 Towns Jewish Times, August 2011)
Chesky
Kopel, 21, of Lawrence, says that his passion is journalism. Another
strong interest is education. But while other college students with
similar interests have been pounding the pavement this summer seeking
paying jobs that will help finance tuition, an airline ticket to their
best friend’s wedding, or that adventurous vacation they’ve been
dreaming of, Chesky spent a month interning for Moment Magazine in
Washington, DC, and then got on a plane to join 33 other outstanding
students from the U.S., Canada, South Africa, and New Zealand who are
spending the summer as counselor-teachers in Yeshiva University’s sixth
annual Counterpoint Israel program.
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Another Face Of Yeshiva University by Nachum Twersky (Jewish Week, July 2011)
There is a narrative that Yeshiva University has shifted to the
right, religiously-speaking. I attended the recent leadership retreat
sponsored by YU’s Center for the Jewish Future (CJF), an annual
get-together in Orlando, FL at the ChampionsGate resort, where I
encountered a whole other face of the Yeshiva and University that
demonstrates how that perception is incorrect.
This conference, established six years ago by YU President Richard
M. Joel, hosted by University Trustee Ira Mitzner and led by CJF Dean
Rabbi Kenneth Brander, clearly reflects Yeshiva University’s commitment
to Torah Umaddah, its signature principle of integrating Torah and
modernity without any compromise to the former. For its part, the CJF
represents the University’s vision for Jewish communities that are
tolerant, relevant and meaningful, as well as passionate about a Torah
Umaddah lifestyle.
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2010 - 2011 Student Missions in the News
- 5 Towns Jewish Times (Long Island, NY)
- The Jewish Press (Brooklyn, NY)
- Baltimore Jewish Times (Baltimore, MD)
- Intermountain Jewish News (Denver, CO)
- Arutz Sheva (Israel)
- Jewish Week (New York)
- The Jewish Voice (Brooklyn, NY)
- Israel National News (Israel)
- Ynet News (Israel)
- New Jersey Jewish News (Whippany, NJ)
- Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA)
- JTA Daily News Bulletin
- American Jewish World (New York, NY)
- Z'man Rechovot (Israel)
- Cleveland Jewish News (Cleveland, OH)
- New Jersey Jewish Standard (Teaneck, NJ)
- St. Louis Jewish Light (St. Louis, MO)
- Texas Jewish Post (Forth Worth, TX)
- Florida Heritage Jewish News (Fern Park, FL)
- The Jewish Chronicle (Pittsburgh, PA)
- Jewish News (London, England)
- Ha'aretz.com (Israel)
- Buffalo Jewish Review (Buffalo, NY)
- Jewish News of Greater Phoenix (Phoenix, AZ)