What's Happening
43rd Annual Summer Culmination Exercises
Ten students received Graduate Certificates in Jewish Nonprofit Management on August 7, 2012 during the 43rd SJNM Culmination Ceremony at the Jack H. Skirball Campus in Los Angeles. The featured speaker was Larry S. Moses, Senior Philanthropic Advisor and President Emeritus of the Wexner Foundation, who was also this summer’s Rabbi Louis Bernstein Scholar-in-Residence. The Wexner Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to enhancing Jewish leadership.
Larry defined leadership as the ability to effect change and emphasized to the graduates that the community will need their leadership, new dreams and visions to carry it forward. “To rebuild Jewish life, to breathe new life into tired institutions and to have the courage to create entirely new and different institutions, your capacity to continually learn will be the most decisive factor,” he said.
Click here to read Larry Moses’s address, entitled, “A Conspiracy of Learning."
The students who received their Graduate Certificates in Jewish Nonprofit Management included:
Rachel Elizabeth Antonoff
Brian Jason Avner
Daniel Brook
Sarah Rae Craemer
Natalie Farahan
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Aaron Gorodzinsky
Yoni Regev
Daniel Aron Tarle
Andrew Harvey Terkel
Adam Michael Wright
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2012 SJNM Israel Seminar
Fourteen students will be participating in this year’s Israel Seminar, taking place from December 16-28. This biannual event is a core component of the educational curriculum of the HUC-JIR School of Jewish Nonprofit Management, designed to give future Jewish professional leaders a deeper understanding of the social, political and cultural dynamics of contemporary Israel. The two primary themes of the 2012 SJNM Israel Seminar are:
- Issues in Modern Israeli Society: Responses from the Nonprofit Sector
- The Peoplehood Paradigm and the Changing Agenda in Israel-Diaspora Relations
2012-13 Spiegel Seminar on Stigmatized Behavior
The topic of this year’s Spiegel Seminar on Stigmatized Behavior is “Addiction in the Jewish Community.” Founded by alumna Marty Spiegel, the annual six-session Spiegel Seminar is co-sponsored by the School of Jewish Nonprofit Management and the Kalsman Institute on Judaism and Health. Over the course of the year, students will hear from speakers about their personal experiences with addiction, learn more about the different kinds of addiction that exist in our community, and discuss ways we, as Jewish professionals, can be better informed and prepared to address this issue in our own communities.
2012 SJNM Graduation
Eleven students received their MA in Jewish Nonprofit Management on May 14, 2012 at the HUC-JIR graduation ceremonies on the Jack H. Skirball Campus in Los Angeles. The names, degrees and current positions of the 2012 graduating class are:
Amanda Greene, MAJNM/MAJE
4th year HUC rabbinical student, Los Angeles
Leah Guskin, MAJNM/MCMGT
Director of Marketing and Recruitment, Union for Reform Judaism, New York
Igor Kholklov, MAJNM/MARE
Program and Marketing Director, Cornell Hillel: The Yudowitz Center for Jewish Campus Life, Ithaca, NY
Elenna King. MAJNM/MSW
Caring Community Social Worker, Jewish Family Service, Los Angeles
Jessica Lebovits. MAJNM/MAJE
Israel Advocacy and Education West Coast Area Director, Jewish National Fund, Los Angeles
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Rachel Levin, MAJNM/MAJE
Director Goodman Camping Initiative, iCenter, Chicago
Matthew Lipton-Schwartz, MAJNM/MBA
Sales Consultant, Oracle
Makenzie Means, MAJNM, MPA
Director of Communications and Advancement, Weizmann Day School, Pasadena, CA
Hannah Rubin-Schlansky, MAJNM/MAJE
Director of Informal Education, Temple Isaiah, Los Angeles
Lauren Trelxler, MAJNM
Program Director, Hillel at Davis and Sacramento
LuAnne Tyzzer, MAJNM/MAJE
Religious School Educator, Central Synagogue's Religious School, New York
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In addition, David Levy, Class of 1987, received the degree of Doctor of Jewish Nonprofit Management,
honoris causa. David is the Associate Director, Board of Governors, Cedar-Sinai Medical Center and is the instructor of the SJNM course on Organizational Management.
About Our Name
In December 2010, the HUC-JIR School of Jewish Communal Service became the HUC-JIR School of Jewish Nonprofit Management. The name was chosen after months… actually a couple of years… of discussion and deliberation. As Richard Siegel, the current director of the school, observed in a recent issue of the
Journal of Jewish Communal Service: “Part of the role of a school that educates Jewish professional leaders is to define the conceptual network in which the graduates will be entering. We believe that in its broadest reaches this network is the nonprofit sector, which aligns the school with those who seek the public good and the betterment of civil society. Within that sector, we have a special responsibility, a scared task to bring the values and wisdom of Jewish history, tradition, and culture to enrich the Jewish experience and improve the societies in which we work.”
In Memory of Debbie Friedman – “Shalom Aleichem”
During the 2010 Summer Session, Debbie Friedman spoke with the SJNM students as part of our series on “Presenting Culture: (In)Forming Jewish Identity.” As she was wrapping up her session, she was asked what she was working on, and she said that she had just written a new melody for “Shalom Aleichem.” We asked if she could give us a preview, and of course she obliged. One of our students, Hannah Rubin-Schlansky, fortuitously recorded it on her IPhone (see link below).
One note. She changed the last verse from “Tsayt-chem l’shalom” (Go in Peace) to “Shuv-chem l’shalom” (Return in Peace) and made a point of asking us to make that substitution when we sing her melody. She wanted to make sure that the angels knew that we wanted them to come back to us. Perhaps as we sing this, her spirit will come back to us, as well. May her memory be a blessing.
Click here for the recording.
