Adir Yolkut

Adir Yolkut is a 5th year Rabbinical Student at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles, California. Originally from St. Louis, Missouri, Adir spent his college years at List College, the joint program between the Jewish Theological Seminary and Columbia University where he received degrees in both Talmud and American History. In between college and rabbinical school, Adir was a staff member on Nativ, the Conservative movement's gap-year program in Israel where he also studied at the Conservative Yeshivah. Adir believes in taking Torah to the people which he accomplished by teaching Torah in exotic locales such as Siberia and El Salvador. In his spare time, Adir is an avid St. Louis sports fan, begrudging runner, and loves a good science fiction show.

Q&A about DIY -- Your Questions Answered about the new Design It Yourself Fellowship

Q & A about DIY(Answering your questions about the new Design It Yourself Fellowship)

We’re sitting with Rabbi Scott, asking him a few of your questions about the new Design It Yourself initiative. Details about application and dates can be found here: https://www.sixthandi.org/event/13356/. DIY is made possible by a generous grant from the Covenant Foundation.

What is DIY?

DIY is a chance to create and reflect on Judaism and Jewish life. Our fellows will have a chance to make the most meaningful Jewish spiritual objects -- a Passover haggadah, a tallit, a shofar, a mezuzah --  and study ancient and modern wisdom about those objects.

I’m not crafty. I once tried to paint my apartment and the fire department had to be called. Long story.

That sounds complicated. You don’t have to be a star on HGTV to join. We’re working with a number of exceptionally talented artists to guide the fellows (and me!) through the creative process. What matters is that you like working with your hands -- that you enjoy the process of making something that is real and physical. No previous experience required, and any skills you do have will be put to good use.

What’s the time commitment like?

Pretty reasonable. Rabbi Shira and I felt like meeting every week was too much for this particular initiative, but we still wanted to help it shape a full Jewish year for participants. So what we came up with was 3 or 4 sessions for each project, scheduled before major Jewish holidays.

How religious do I have to be?

We will have people in the fellowship who would never use the word “religious,” and people who lovingly embrace the title. All that matters in DIY is whether you find the experience of creating and making the Jewish objects meaningful.

How many people will be in the fellowship?

Because it’s our first year, we’ll cap the initiative at ten fellows. Seven have already signed up. Send in your applications quickly!

Anything else?

An important part of the fellowship will be cultivating participants’ voices. Fellows will be asked to reflect upon each project - whether through writing, drawing, music, or the medium of their choice. Your voice matters, and we’ll help you add it to the many voices of wisdom in our Tradition.

Well, you heard the man. Send in your applications (https://www.sixthandi.org/event/13356/)!

The Covenant Foundation Announces New Grants

The Covenant Foundation Announces New Grants

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Forward-Thinking Jewish Educational Organizations and Initiatives are Awarded a Total of $1.6 Million

Approximately $1.8 Million to Be Disbursed in 2016

New York, Jan 6, 2016—The Covenant Foundation announced $1.6 million in new grants today, supporting organizations and initiatives with potential to catalyze local and nationwide impact in Jewish education.

The new grants touch across the spectrum of Jewish educational venues - from museums and synagogues, to high-tech classrooms and summer camps – and underscore commitment to innovation and ideas redefining the scope, reach and depth of Jewish education.

“We are going where bold ideas and dogged implementation reside,” said Eli N. Evans, Chairman of the Board of Directors of The Covenant Foundation. “These new grantees hold great promise for success, and are positioned to be change makers and models of creativity.”

Foundation grants are divided into two categories: Signature grants, which provide funding for up to $250,000 for up to five years, and Ignition grants, of up to $20,000 for one year to support new and untested approaches.

The grants announced today are part of approximately $1.8 million to be distributed this year.

“Those in Jewish education have great visions for now and the future,” said Harlene Winnick Appelman, Executive Director of The Covenant Foundation. “We welcome the opportunity to dream with these impressive practitioners in the field and help them turn these visions into reality.”

The new round of Ignition grantees include:

• Be’chol Lashon, San Francisco, CA: $20,000 over one year to develop and expand the reach of its Passport to Peoplehood (P2P) program.
• BIMA/Genesis at Brandeis University, Waltham, MA: $20,000 over one year to develop teacher training and curricula integrating Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math (STEAM) with Jewish Studies.
• Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, Chicago, IL: $20,000 over one year to assess the landscape of Hebrew language instruction in public high schools and create a national framework to expand it.
• Kulanu NNJ, Woodcliff Lake, NJ: $20,000 over one year to train congregational school teachers to effectively integrate educational technology in classrooms.
• Sixth and I Historic Synagogue, Washington, DC: $16,000 over one year to develop DIY: Design Identity Yourself, a program for young adults that combines Jewish text study with collaborative learning and creative self-expression.
• The Well, West Bloomfield, MI: $20,000 over one year to support and expand CSI: Coffee. Study. Interpret., aBeit Midrash-style learning initiative.
• Yeshiva University Museum at the Center for Jewish History, New York, NY: $20,000 over one year to create and implement educational programming connected to How a Poem Begins, an exhibit examining pre-state Israel poet Rahel Bluwstein.

Since 1991, the Foundation has provided more than $28 million to develop and support Jewish education and community-building projects and programs in North America.

Past grantees with creative and trailblazing approaches to Jewish education across denominations and settings are highlighted on the Foundation’s website, www.covenantfn.org and in Sight Line, the Foundation’s new digital journal.

The Covenant Foundation is currently inviting 2016 Signature and Ignition grant applications. Applicants should visitwww.covenantfn.org/grants for information and guidelines. The deadline for submitting an initial letter of inquiry is Feb. 25, 2016.

The Covenant Foundation is a program of the Crown Family Philanthropies

Jewish Emergent Network Announces New Rabbinic Fellowship

Jewish Emergent Network Announces New Rabbinic Fellowship

Applications now being accepted for staff and Rabbinic Fellowship positions at seven innovative Jewish communities across the country.

Contact: Melissa Balaban

Melissa@ikar-la.org, 323-634-1870 x102

LOS ANGELES, January 5, 2016 – The Jewish Emergent Network (“the Network”), a collaboration between seven path-breaking Jewish communities from across the United States, announces it is now accepting applications for a new National Rabbinic Fellowship, which will begin in June 2016.

This Fellowship program will place selected early career rabbis into one of the seven participating communities for a two-year period. The communities include: IKAR in Los Angeles, Kavana in Seattle, The Kitchen in San Francisco, Mishkan in Chicago, Sixth & I in Washington, DC, and Lab/Shul and Romemu in New York City. All seven communities have individually received recognition for the impact of their work in the Jewish community on both a local and national scale.

The purpose of the Fellowship is to immerse talented young clergy in the work of these thriving communities while providing valuable training and mentoring. Fellows will be supported in the development of their rabbinic vision and skills, preparing them to complete the Fellowship as part of a national cohort of creative, vision-driven rabbis eager to invest in the reanimation of North American Jewish life. Upon completion of the program, each Fellow will be poised to educate, engage, and serve an array of underserved populations, including disaffected and unaffiliated Jews, young adults, families with young children, and others.

The clergy and executive leaders of the seven communities have been meeting for the last two years in exploration of collaboration, mutual learning, deep solidarity and increased strategic impact on the field of emerging congregational models. These efforts were partially funded by the Slingshot Fund, the Natan Fund, and the Leichtag Foundation.

Seed funding to launch the Network has been generously provided through a grant from the Jim Joseph Foundation. Additional support is provided by the Crown Family. Network members are continuing to secure additional program funding over the next four years.

Through a collaborative process, the seven communities will hire rabbis toward the beginning of their careers to serve as the inaugural cohort of Rabbinic Fellows. Once embedded in his or her home community, each Fellow will take on a variety of independent rabbinic tasks and will receive weekly supervision and support from leaders within the host organization. Throughout the two-year Fellowship, Fellows will also meet a number of times as a fully assembled cohort, traveling to each of the seven Network organizations for intensive conferences/site visits. The final site visit, planned for June 2018, will also include a public-facing conference that welcomes clergy, staff, and lay leaders from across the country to engage one another and the Fellows and to share best practices of innovation and creativity in Jewish community-building.

The seven communities in the Network do not represent any one denomination or set of religious practices. What they share is a devotion to revitalizing the field of Jewish engagement, a commitment to approaches both traditionally rooted and creative, and a demonstrated success in attracting unaffiliated and disengaged Jews to a rich and meaningful Jewish practice. While each community is different in form and organizational structure, all have taken an entrepreneurial approach to this shared vision, operating outside of conventional institutional models, rethinking basic assumptions about ritual and spiritual practice, membership models, staff structures, the religious/cultural divide and physical space. With the launch of this new rabbinic fellowship, the Network hopes to inspire new creative ventures on the Jewish landscape.

Fellowship Applications are currently being accepted from recent graduates of rabbinic schools of all denominations. To learn more about the fellowship and submit an application, please visit the Network’s website at www.jewishemergentnetwork.org.

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About the Jewish Emergent Network

The Jewish Emergent Network is comprised of the leaders of seven path‐breaking Jewish communities from across the United States that have come together in the spirit of collaboration. These include: IKAR in Los Angeles, Kavana in Seattle, The Kitchen in San Francisco, Mishkan in Chicago, Sixth & I in Washington, D.C., and Lab/Shul and Romemu in New York.

http://www.ikar-la.org/jen/

Shabbat Squared Dvar Torah: Join the Conversation

Hey, Aaron: I've been thinking about the Torah portion, Toldot, which tells the story of Jacob and Esau, two brothers who are destined from the womb to be perceived in a certain way. Esau: the hunter (read: bad guy). Jacob: the scholar (read: good guy). How did the preconceived notions affect their actual lives? Is there something in here about breaking out of preconceived notions of ourselves or others? Let me know what you think. --Shira

Hi Shira- I am really excited for Friday night, and I think there is definitely something here about preconceived notions of ourselves and where we get them from. Especially when we look at who Esau marries at the end of the Torah portion. "Esau realized that the Canaanite women displeased his father Isaac. So Esau went to Ishmael and took to wife…” Seriously- the only thing it seems Esau looked for in a spouse was someone that would his dad happy. That’s kind of crazy, right? Esau has me wondering- How much of our lives are determined by other people’s expectations of us? Whose expectations are we living out? How much should we let other people’s expectations of our lives dictate the decisions we make? --Aaron

Hey, Aaron: First of all, you have to check out this study. Yes, it’s incredibly sexist. (Chalk it up to “things a female rabbi can say but a male rabbi can’t.”) But it makes clear that we’re affected by other people’s expectations, whether we like it or not. Sometimes we can extricate ourselves (see this amazing Facebook post by Elizabeth Gilbert about “tribal shaming”), but not always. Nor, perhaps, do we even want to separate ourselves from our family, community, role models. The iconic image of the American cowboy going at it alone strikes me as lonely and even dangerous. --Shira

Haha! I'm glad you found that first study and not me. Do you think I could get away with describing it from the bima? Science based on rating women's attractiveness on a scale of 1-10- not offensive at all, right? :) Thinking about that study though, there is definitely something pervasive about how we respond to other people's expectations of us- not just our tribes of origin. Esau seems to wrestle with others' expectations his entire life. I know it's not in this week's parasha, but Esau wasn't just worried about his parents' expectations. He spends most of his adulthood roaming the countryside with this rough-and-tumble band of soldiers (think Sons of Anarchy). I'm trying to imagine what kind of person did they expected him to be. What's the opposite of "mensch"?

Bring Your Whole Self to the Holidays, by Rabbi Scott Perlo

Fear - Anxiety - Awe, by Rabbi Shira Stutman