Category: Program
Get your vocal cords ready to welcome, Daniel Henkin!
Please get your vocal cords ready and help us welcome, Daniel Henkin, a pioneer of Jewish A Capella singing. We have a Musician-In-Residence at the Limmud Bay Area 2018 Festival thanks to The Covenant Foundation.
Daniel Henkin has been dubbed “our beloved Jewish rock star” by those who spend summers with him at Camp Ramah Nyack. There, Henkin produces the annual Ramah musical celebration, a highlight of the season that attracts thousands of parents, alumni and community leaders. At the Ramaz School in New York, Henkin directs the music program and teaches chamber choirs. At Queens College, he directs the Hillel’s Jewish a cappella group, which draws singers from colleges throughout the New York City area and has been a three-time national champion in Jewish collegiate a cappella competitions.
Join Jason Harris at Limmud Bay Area 2018!
Taglit-Birthright Israel Alum? Are you one of the 21,000 Bay Area Young adults who have gone on one of the 10-annual local trips in the past 18 years? Want to re-connect? Join your friends from your trip along with Bay Area Birthright Director, Jason Harris at Sonoma State University!
Join Zvi Hirschfield at Limmud Bay Area 2018!
Do you struggle to decode the fine line between refugees, asylum-seekers and infiltrators? What about making a distinction between public shaming and public service?
Thanks to our always incredible partner the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies we will have the opportunity to learn with the distinguished Rabbi Zvi Hirschfield about the competing Jewish values in a Jewish state and the ethical challenges of social media through a Jewish lens!
Zvi usually teaches Talmud, Halakha and Jewish Thought at Pardes and holds a B.A. in History from Columbia University and did graduate work at Harvard University in Medieval and Modern Jewish Thought. He studied at Yeshivat Har Etzion in Israel and has rabbinic ordination from the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. He was the director of Judaica at the JCC of Cleveland and an instructor at the Cleveland College of Jewish Studies for many years. He also serves as a curriculum writer and is involved in staff training for the Nesiya Institute. His wife, Dina, is a faculty member of the Hebrew University School of Public Health, and they have four children.
Welcome Noga Brenner Samia to Limmud Bay Area!
Want to understand Israel like an Israeli? Our friend Noga Brenner Samia has a suggestion. Learn the Israeli Declaration of Independence. At Limmud Bay Area 2018 Festival she will walk us through the text and help us learn it as a secular text and contemplate what makes it sacred.
Noga was raised both in New York and Netanya, Israel. After serving as a sergeant in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), Noga attained a B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering and Management from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, an MBA at Washington University in St. Louis and an MA in Pluralistic Jewish Education from HUC/Hebrew University, Jerusalem. She worked in the military and the pharmaceutical industries in finance, sales and marketing. In 2005, Noga joined KolDor, a global network of young Jewish leaders promoting Jewish Peoplehood, as executive director. She is the founder of a Jewish renewal community in Tel-Mond, where she lives with her husband and three children. She is currently Deputy Director at BINA: The Jewish Movement for Social Change and a teacher at the Secular Yeshiva in Tel Aviv. She wrote in her BINA profile, “BINA means ‘Home for the Creation of a Nation’s Soul’…for me it just means ‘home’.”
If I am only for myself
In an article written by Editor in Chief of JTA News, Andrew Silow-Carroll on why we focus on specifically identifying the Jewish victims in a general community tragedy, Rabbi Yitz Greenberg was quoted as saying, “Repair of the whole world starts with my country, my city, my neighborhood first… Self-interest is legitimate. People work harder and produce more in an economy built on private property. Loved ones or family first is the natural, more human way to operate.”
As proud as we are of past Limmud Bay Area Festival presenter Rabbi Yitz Greenberg we are thrilled to announce today that Andrew Silow-Carroll will be presenting at this years Limmud Bay Area 2018 Festival.
Rabbi Yitz Greenberg continues his quote later in Silow-Carroll’s article by quoting the great Rabbinical Sage Hillel, “If I am only for myself, what am I?” Read the full article here: goo.gl/zEY9Ld.
The dialog continues, and you can take part! Join us this summer at Limmud!
The Jewish Future Decoded from DNA
Mazal Tov! to the newly-minted Natalie Telis, Ph.D in Biomedical Informatics. Dr. Natalie will be back at the Limmud Bay Area 2018 Festival by popular demand. She will be discussing how Jewish History and the Future can be encoded and decoded from our DNA.
Sketching the Beauty
Shavuah Tov!
Artists-in-residence and friends Elena Gold and Dasha Jacobson visited the Sonoma State University (SSU) campus this week, where the Limmud Bay Area 2018 Festival will take place. Elena and Dasha are preparing an exciting creative program for us. The natural beauty of the campus inspired them for an impromptu sketching session.
Expect the unexpected: Kevah
A brand new cohort of Kevah Teaching Fellows are set to attend the Limmud Bay Area 2018 Festival. Kevah is a Jewish community nonprofit organization that empowers individuals and organizations to build localized and intimate Jewish learning communities (“Kevah Groups”) that are matched with a trained and vetted Kevah Educator.
Youngish Jewish Educators from all over the country will present their Kevah graduation projects at our Festival this year. Expect the unexpected. Who will be selected for this years Kevah Fellowship? Which challenging topics will they take on? Stay tuned!
BTW Kevah means a “set practice” and is the word used in rabbinic literature (Pirkei Avot 1:15) to describe how Torah study should be integrated into the life of each and every Jew, regardless of age, Jewish background, or sexual orientation and become a part of their everyday rhythms.
Welcome back, Rabbi Darren Kleinberg to Limmud Bay Area!
Welcome back, Rabbi Darren Kleinberg, Ph.D to Limmud Bay Area!
The Head of the Kehillah Jewish High School in Palo Alto, Rabbi Kleinberg is also a writer, a member of the Board of Lehrhaus Judaica, and a faculty member of the Wexner Heritage Program, The Melton School, The Kitchen, and Gvanim. But here at the Limmud Bay Area 2018 Festival we know him as that one presenter you don’t want to miss!