Transformimg Jewish Lives
10,500 North American Students Participated in Birthright This Summer
From eJewishPhilanthropy:
Nearly 20,000 young adults participated in the Taglit-Birthright Israel trip program this summer, among them 10,526 registered students from over 712 colleges and universities across North America.
Students came from large universities with substantial Jewish populations to small colleges – representing approximately 20 percent of all colleges and universities in the United States and Canada.Read the full article at eJewishPhilanthropy...
Panel on Jewish activism will go on, but not at BJE
From San Francisco's Jweekly:
An upcoming panel discussion on the topic of Jewish activism has experienced more than its fair share of action even before taking place. "Reclaiming Jewish Activism: Rediscovering Voices of Our Ancestors" originally was going to be held next week at the Bureau of Jewish Education's Jewish Community Library in San Francisco.
But BJE officials scrapped that plan two months ago after learning that panelist Rae Abileah is a member of Jewish Voice for Peace and co-director of Code Pink, two organizations that support forms of BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) against Israel.
Read the full article in Jweekly...
Israel Advocacy on Campus Gets New App
From The Jewish Week:
In response to a changing attitude toward Israel on college campuses, the Israel advocacy group StandWithUs lauched in 2001. Its goal was to serve as an informational guerrilla unit of sorts and work with established campus organizations like Hillel to combat anti-Semitism and anti-Israel propaganda. With calls for universities to divest from Israeli companies still occurring on campuses across North America, StandWithUs has found itself growing in recent years and working harder to reach more college students.
Recognizing the need to connect with these young adults through new technology, the organization has released a mobile phone app aimed to encourage this demographic to share positive information about Israel.
Read the full article in The Jewish Week...
Learning from Taglit-Birthright Israel: An Academic Conference
From eJewishPhilanthropy:
Later this month, The Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University will host Learning from Taglit-Birthright Israel, the first academic conference to examine what scholars, practitioners, and policy makers can learn from Taglit-Birthright Israel, the largest single educational program in the Jewish world today. Since it was launched in 1999, Taglit has brought nearly 300,000 Diaspora young adults to Israel and involved another 60,000 Israeli peers. By expanding the number and variety of scholars and public policy intellectuals engaged in the examination of Taglit, the conference will further develop the study of Taglit as a social experiment in educational innovation and elaborate on a wide variety of substantive issues including the following:
- The impact of Taglit on American Jewry and Jewish culture
- Taglit's potential contributions to educational and social theory
- The encounter between young adults from the Diaspora and their Israeli peers as an inter-cultural experience
Read the full article in eJewishPhilanthropy...
Exporting Knowledge: Israel Sci-Tech Curriculum Making Impact at U.S. Jewish Day Schools
From eJewishPhilanthropy:
"The idea of being involved in science and technology is very appealing to me right now," said Greg Robinov, a student at Solomon Schechter School of Westchester, north of New York.
"Dealing hands-on with hypotheses and ideas that are truly applicable to how the real world works is something I really want to be part of."
Read the full article in eJewishPhilanthropy...