THE 2012 WCJCC GlobAl JEWISH CoNNECTIoNS FElloWSHIP

MEET THE FElloWS >>

Dear WCJCC Fellows,

For the past 35 years, the World Confederation of Jewish Community Centers has demonstrated the added value and benefits that stem from forging close ties with Jews in other communities around the world. Yet, the Global Jewish Connections Fellows program is the first time a young leadership group is being trained globally and long term, cutting across continents and cultures. We have been inspired by this experience and thank you for joining this new journey.

It is our vision that Jews around the world will embrace Jewish peoplehood concepts. We believe that each one of your projects will weave another piece in this fascinating tapestry. We thank our sponsors and partners, the steering committee members and the mentors who have all helped make a dream come true.

May you go from strength to strength,

Ishie GitlinChair

Menachem ReviviChair of Advisory Committee

Smadar Bar-AkivaExecutive Director

Jane GellmanPresident

2012 WCJCC Fellows in Jerusalem

Alan Jaschkowitz

Dovy Singal

Alan, 37, was born in Guatemala and is now living in Mexico with his wife and son. He has a degree in business management followed by an MBA. He has worked extensively with his community in Guatemala all his life in many different areas, and after moving to Mexico he joined the CDI and started working in the treasury department. Alan has his own company focusing on the service industry and working with banks and other credit companies operating in Guatemala, Mexico and the United States.

Dov, 28, lives in Jerusalem. Born and raised in the United States, he has been involved with Jewish leadership since middle school. As a youth leader, Dov has strived to bridge the gap between different sects of Judaism and has worked to build a multi-denomi-national dialogue. He moved to Israel in 2001 and currently resides in the the Armon Hanatziv neighborhood of Jerusalem with his daughters and wife. Dov attended Bar Ilan University where he studied community leadership and informal education. He cur-rently works with the Community Center in Early Childhood Education.

Mexico City, Mexico

Jerusalem, Israel

VENTURE: A dating website for single and divorced Jewish people over 30 in Mexico. Since the Jewish community in Mexico City is made up of many smaller communities and members often say it is difficult to find a partner and get into a relationship, there is a need for a website that will connect between them without the discomfort of go-ing to singles events aimed at this age group.Mentor - Ishie Gitlin

VENTURE: “Leb”- Lehipagesh Ba’kehila (Let’s meet in the Community) seeks to create and support cross-denominational dialogue for young families while creating and strengthening a connection with the local community center and a sister Jew-ish community abroad (the Mid-Island “Y”). The vision is to cultivate a neighborhood community and a genuine feeling of peoplehood, openness, sharing and acceptance among the different styles of Jewish life through a series of social and study meetings that will culminate in a main event at the end of the year. Mentor - Lea Balas

Ezequiel Hajnal

Jenny Spektor

Ezequiel is from Lamroth Hakol JCC in Buenos Aires. He is 27-years-old and has been involved in the local community, first through his family, and during the last ten years, through assisting in youth activities and programming. In 2008, he graduated with a major in business economics and works for an international grain brokerage company.

Jenny (Batya) is 25-years-old and has an MA in economics. For the past 11 years she has been actively involved in Jewish life in Odessa at JCC Migdal, volunteering with children and teenagers, at Family Camps and in the Jewish Museum of Odessa.

buenos Aires, Argentina

odessa, Ukraine

VENTURE: Machane Am Echad (MAE) – While the end goal would be to develop a worldwide Jewish summer camp in Latin America, the first step is developing joint programs between JCCs around the world that focus on youth. As a next stage, youth groups will visit each other and representatives from different communities will partici-pate in a Jewish camp in Latin America. Finally, the possibility of developing a world-wide Jewish camp in Latin America will be explored. Mentor - Diego Freedman and Sasha Friedman

VENTURE: A global website to which different communities and different organi-zations will add their programs, so that the wide spectrum of JCC programs will be available for all Jews worldwide. The website will also provide a forum for discussion of Jewish topics. Mentor - Alexender Elkin

2012 WCJCC fellows visit to Davidson Center in Jerusalem

Maxim Delchev

Michal Rusin

The best word that can fully describe Maxim is “almost.” He has almost graduated, he is almost funny and almost won “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” in Bulgaria. He is now working for the Jewish community in Bulgaria, which sometimes takes almost all of his time. Maxim is the educational coordinator for the Beit Shalom JCC where he is respon-sible for the Jewish content of programming for all ages, from two days old to 65-years-old. His hobby is searching for Jewish values in extraordinary places (one of his latest articles was about how to teach Jewish values through the Angry Birds game).

Michal Rusin, Adv. is deputy human resources director of the Raanana Municipality. She’s a board member of Migvanim Community Centers – Ramat Hasharon’s chain of JCCs. Michal is also a board member of the Takdim Community Foundation, and a member of the Ramat Hasharon municipal drug and addiction prevention committee as well. She is a mother of two teenagers.

Sofia, bulgaria

Ramat Hasharon, Israel

VENTURE: Better Late helps adults in Bulgaria who were never able to celebrate a bar/bat-mitzvah finally complete this right of passage. The program will also include ways to connect with other Jewish communities. Mentor - Julia Dandalova

VENTURE: From Slavery to Freedom is a website with personal or family stories of Jews from different communities around the globe regarding the theme of slavery to freedom. After collecting the stories, a group Hagaddah will be created. Mentor - Shelley Kedar

Pazit levitan

Shira Kaiserman

New York City, NY

Philadelphia, PA

Pazit is a New York-based media producer, mother and educator, dedicated to identity-based projects. For the past four years she has been volunteering as the Chair of Israe-liness.org, a family program celebrating the Israeli identity of children who are growing up outside of Israel. Among her award-winning media projects are a documentary short, “A Personal Touch”, a mobile game for smoking cessation “Lit2Quit,” and an independent feature film “Failing Better Now,” She earned a BA in journalism and art history from the He-brew University in Jerusalem, an MA in film and television from Bournemouth University in England, an MBA in media management from Metropolitan College of New York, and is currently pursuing a doctorate in communication and education at Columbia University.

Shira is from New York City, but originally from Philadelphia, PA. She has been involved with the JCC in Manhattan since 2009, serving on their Leadership Council for young professionals. After an inspiring Birthright Israel trip in 2010, she left the corporate world to pursue a career in the Jewish non-profit sector. She currently works at the JCC in Man-hattan as an assistant director of program marketing.

VENTURE: Jface Docs will form a Jewish documentries film festival that will take place simultaneously in different Jewish communities around the globe, dealing with issues related to Jewish identity and Jewish diversity. Mentor - Marty Maskowitz

VENTURE: Birthright without Borders is a unique birthright experience that aims to connect Jews from New York and Argentina to help them understand and further develop their own Jewish identities living in the diaspora. These new friendships will be a source for them to explore different ways to be Jewish in their own countries.Mentor - Liz Fisher

Shlomi Amsalem

Tamar brody

Jerusalem, Israel

Jerusalem, Israel

Shlomi, a Jerusalemite, is 44-years-old, married and has three children. Shlomi is an independent businessman in the field of Photography. He is involved in import and marketing, advertising, PR, photography of conferences, medical photography and computer graphics. For the past ten years, Shlomi has been an active volunteer in the administration committee of the Gilo Community Center, and for the past two years he has served as Chair of Gilo’s Education Forum. He is a graduate of the educational leadership course for community administration and was twice elected its outstanding volunteer. He is also a graduate of the EU Common Leadership Course in Brussels and the Mandel School for Educational Leadership.

Tamar is from Jerusalem and a mother of two. She is a member of the Board of the French Hill Community Center and active in organizing cultural activities for young fam-ilies in the community. She is also a member of the Parents’ Association for the bilingual Hand in Hand School (mixed Jewish-Arab education) that her children attend. Tamar is also active in “Yerushalmim”, a movement dedicated to fostering, encouraging and sup-porting the continuation of a pluralistic community in Jerusalem.

VENTURE: School2School will connect schools in Gilo, Jerusalem and North Carolina through focusing on Hebrew language study and at the same time, create connections between the two communities. Mentor - Aviva Dvir

VENTURE: Leaders on the Hill is a lay leadership training course that is specifically targeted at young volunteer activists. This course is relevant to the upcoming demo-cratic elections to the Board of Directors of the Community Council of French Hill in Jerusalem which will be held in the coming months. Mentor - Michael Ganor

Tanya lvova

Wayne Greenberg

Tanya is deputy director of the Jewish Welfare and Community Center “Eva”, in St. Pe-tersburg. In 2004 she graduated from St. Petersburg State University from the math-ematical linguistics department of philological faculty. She was a member of the Co-ordination Board of the Youth Human Rights Movement from 1999-2001. Since 2001 she has been working at Eva, first as coordinator of the children’s creative studios and later as deputy director. In 2007, she graduated from the Lehava youth leadership train-ing program and became more involved in Jewish educational activities. She has de-veloped a project called “Ir Ahuva - The Beloved City” that runs a study course for tour guides of Jewish St. Petersburg and offers free Jewish city tours for the community.

Wayne, a lifelong New Yorker, resides in Staten Island with his wife, Cathy, and three sons. Wayne is a certified public accountant with a local specialized practice. Wayne tries to in-still the desire for volunteerism and community service upon his sons by being an active member in his community. He is an officer and member of his synagogue’s Board of Di-rectors, his son’s little league baseball coach, a volunteer paramedic for a local volunteer ambulance service, and involved in a number of other local organizations. As a former member of its Board of Directors, Wayne continues to be heavily involved with the Jewish Community Center of Staten Island by participating in numerous committees.

St. Petersburg, Russia

Staten Island, NY

VENTURE: Jewish PeterGlobe is developing a Jewish scavanger hunt in St. Peters-burg that highlights the Jewish history of the city and how this history is connected to the global Jewish world today, showing the great contribution of St. Petersburg’s Jew-ish community to the modern Jewish world. Mentor - Maksim Meltsin

VENTURE: Vayehi Ohr - Let There Be Light will foster awareness of Jewish heritage among teens from different JCCs around the world by utilizing the study of the Ho-locaust. The heightened appreciation will hopefully lead to increased involvement in their local Jewish community and with other Jewish communities worldwide. This, in turn, will create a pool of worldwide Jewish leaders which will carry the concept of Worldwide Jewish Peoplehood into the future. Mentor - Vicki Roitman

The “Global Jewish Connections Fellows program” is a new and unique program initiated by the World Confederation of Jewish Community Centers- in partnership with the UJA Federation of New York, the Jewish Agency for Israel, the Israel New York Connections office and PresenTense. The program is designed for young (25-45) volunteer leaders from Jewish Community Centers who have been involved in Tri Center or dual partnerships through UJA Federaton of New York. The program trains Jewish leaders to acquire a global Jewish perspective and to become social entrepreneurs in their own local community. The 12 fellows represent New York, Israel, Argentina, Mexico, Bulgaria, Russia and Ukraine. The program consists of online study, an intensive seminar in Israel and Budapest, a personal project developed with the help of a personal mentor. It is supervised by a worldwide Steering Committee.

Program Director: Smadar Bar-Akiva; Program Coordinator: Neriya Segerman; PresenTense Liaison: Michael Podberezin

Learn more at w w w.wcjcc.weebly.com

Thank you to our sponsors and donors for supporting the 2012 WCJCC Global Jewish Connections Fellowship.