Guess Who?!?

[Brian Cohen]

Hello you wonderful people, you,

It was truly a pleasure to get to know you over the past week at Institute. I think we embarked on the beginning of a great new community and I want to make sure we keep in touch. To that end, Arianna and I will be working on creating a Ning space, which is essentially an online portal for us to communicate and collaborate in the future. More to come on that soon.

In the meantime, I though it might be fun to play a little matching game. Below are paragraphs taken from our intro bios. See if you can match which bio with which person! Answers will be sent out in a separate email so you are not tempted (too much) to cheat!

------------------------------

1) I am director of LearnServe International, a DC-based non-profit organization that offers leadership and entrepreneurship training to high school students from across the DC area.  We lead international summer service-learning trips to Zambia, Paraguay, and Jamaica, and also help students design and launch their own social ventures.  I recently completed my MBA at George Washington University, and prior to that worked at the international organization Ashoka. 

2) Because of my job I have an awesome excuse to read lots of young adult literature and if anyone ask why I'm not reading an adult book I can say, "it's for work." I also love comic books and graphic novels and have been working to build up my school's graphic novel collections with books that have kickass female characters. In my not work life, I like hula hooping (both doing and making), sewing/knitting, cooking, watching baseball (which when you're a Red Sox fan involves a lot of yelling at the radio) and since it's the summer, taking naps.  And reading.  I do a lot of reading.

3) A good chunk of my day goes to my two jobs, I work at the Arizona State Land Department as the Chief Information Officer, and I teach Webdesign 2 for the University of Phoenix on the side. After work I like to go to the gym to spin and weight lift. I typically attend Torah study one evening a week and have shabbat plans every weekend. When the weather permits I am a avid hiker, cyclist and mountain biker.

4) The past few years of new-teacherhood have been quite a whirlwind, and various Jewish communities have offered me much-needed opportunities for Jewish community as well as spiritual and religious exploration.  B'nai Jeshurun in Manhattan has been home for me on many Friday nights and more recently I have been thrilled to discover the Brooklyn havurah Shir Ha'Maalot.  I'm also very involved in theJewish Meditation Center of Brooklyn and have recently begun to teach meditation there.  

5) I've been involved in something Jewish since I started attending the JCC Kaiserman summer camps and Solomon Schechter Day School at age 5. Since then I've added a few more to my repertoire: Camp Galil (part of Habonim Dror North America), Penn Hillel, Pardes, Moishe House Philadelphia, and most recently I co-chaired LimmudPhilly for two years. 

6) Since graduating, I've done some assorted things, mostly teaching at various Hebrew Schools in NYC and learning, both full-time and part-time, at Yeshivat Hadar, a non-denominational egalitarian yeshiva on the Upper West Side, which is a wonderful place of Torah learning and community building which I would be happy to talk about! (I also talk about other things too.) Starting in late August, I will begin an MS program at Hunter College (on the Upper East Side) in Social Research, which is a mixture of research methods, statistics, sociological theory, and... a bunch of other stuff.

7) as a newcomer (and maybe just a passerby) to the US and to the jewish world (worlds?) in the US, I am still learning and exploring the jewish life and communities around me and I feel that coming and living here so far have expanded my life and my views and thoughts about judaism and about different ways of living jewishly.

8) As an introduction/disclaimer, I'm still an undergraduate student, so, life's not quite real for me yet. I'm currently a rising senior at Brown University studying Africana Studies and Biology, with an interest in the embodiment/biologicalization of structural racism, and the dangers of racializing biomedical research. Throughout my time at Brown I've dabbled in a bunch of things, to varying degrees, including JStreet-esque political activism, sex education, stem cell engineering research, ultimate frisbee, campaign finance reform, and the Female Sexuality Workshop.

9) In Providence I went to day school until highschool. In highschool I must say I lost my Judaism for a bit. Fast forward to the summer of my freshman year of college when I went to Israel for an Archaeological dig. As I was walking around Jerusalem, I wanted to fit in. I saw that lots of women were covering their hair- so I covered my hair. I had no idea that this was something married 'religious' women did until a sodier mentioned to my friend that I was a bit young to be married. I found Aish Ha Torah and asked them lots of questions but found that that was not the path I want to take. I think my favorite time jewishy was when I was living at the Columbia Bayit. The sense of community and weekly shabbat potlucks were awesome. This is when I really started enjoying Shabbat and going semi regularly to services. Currently I live in Park Slope in a collective house that I helped found.

10) I grew up in New York City and went to Hebrew school at a reform synagogue I wasn't a huge fan of. Judaism wasn't really a big part of my life again until I graduated from college and moved to DC, where I started out working at Jews United for Justice and participating in Avodah: the Jewish Service Corps. Now, I go to Shabbat services at Tikkun Leil Shabbat, a social justice Havurah in DC, in addition to organizing services at various people's houses. I organized two Passover seders this year, one for the activist community and one for friends I did Avodah with.

11) Excited to meander across the Southwest and process what has been an incredible three years here.  I moved to New Orleans to be a Corps Member in AVODAH where I worked at the New Orleans Women's Shelter.  I stayed in the city after AVODAH and have been engaged in queer Jewish organizing here and in various cities in the South.  I have also been doing intake for the Legal Aid office for about a year and a half and am applying to law school this fall to pursue trans law and policy.

12) I am a worker-owner at Equal Exchange, a Fair Trade coffee company based just south of Boston. I spend my time at work helping faith communities successfully serve and sell Fair Trade products. When I'm not working, I can often be found growing veggies in my community garden plot or cooking with them at home. I participated in Avodah (a Jewish service corps program that I know some of you know well!) in 2005-6 in DC, so I'm also part of an active Boston-based Avodah alumni community.

13) After graduating, I moved to Brooklyn to live my parallel dreams of being a hipster yid, and doing Avodah. I worked as a community organizer and inter-group coalition building facilitator at the Crown Heights Community Mediation Center, and threw a threw frisbee around in the park on Shabbos. Life was getting real, so I grabbed a half-time job as the Assistant Director of Etgar 36, running experiential educational trips for Jewish Teens on the Civil Rights Movement and food justice issues in New Orleans. The teaching was great, but I spent more of my time bumming around New Orleans, Atlanta, California, and New York. When I wasn't on trips, I was mostly reading novels, keeping the inbox clear, and davening real late and real slow in the mornings. 

14) I work for the Jewish Federations of North America, so I certainly get to see the establishment / institutional side of the Jewish world, but I like to say (with a significant element of truth) that working for the Federations is in fact one of the least Jewish things I do with my time. Additionally, as I live in a city where everyone’s first question is “what do you do?,”  I try very hard to ask and answer other questions when first meeting someone.   

I first attended Tikkun Leil Shabbat in 2006, so my answer to the “what brings you to institute question” is, in classic Jewish form, in the form of the following question:

“No, but seriously, how was I NOT into this before?!”  

15) I spend my time whizzing between my vocation - fundraising consulting, currently running a capital campaign for a synagogue in New Jersey, my school - M.A. in Political Science at CUNY Graduate Center, and my passion - writing about politics, culture, feminism, philanthropy and other topics for publications like The Nation, Heeb,Salon, and Alternet. Occasionally I start Jewish-themed Ryan Gosling tumblrs.

16) I grew up in a Modern Orthodox Jewish community in Charleston, South Carolina, and have spent the years since I began college learning how to navigate the line between living my Judaism on my own terms and staying connected to and accepted by more traditional Jewish communities. Some issues that I have really struggled with on this journey include egalitarianism, pluralism, and the roles of G-d and of Israel in Judaism. This past year I have spent a lot of my free time studying at Mechon Hadar in Manhattan and co-founded a vibrant independent minyan in Brooklyn.

17) I live in a housing co-op, work for a co-op (Equal Exchange, a Fair Trade co-op), shop at a co-op (grocery store)...notice a theme?  I love my job in the Fair Trade movement and am planning on going back to business school in 2 years to study social business.  I'm into informal communal living, I love Shabbat potlucks with intellectual conversations and boisterous laughter, and I love playing soccer, dancing, and singing with friends.  I also love reading (mostly non-fiction, mostly about social business or about people using power to change the world in positive or horribly negative ways).  I've had great Shabbat meals sitting around and discussing our favorite books.  I also love being in nature, hiking or rafting, although I don't get to very often, and I am enraptured by the ocean.

18) I began college extremely isolated from the religious community.  I was at the height of my religiosity and didn't socialize with men, which made participation in the co-ed Hillel community virtually impossible.  Eventually, for a variety of reasons, I began reevaluating this path and ultimately moved into a co-ed Jewish coop at Columbia.  Here -- ironically, considering its Jewishly heterogenous makeup --I finally felt part of a cohesive community.  I served on the board as the religious coordinator, facilitating Jewish life in the house and striving to create an environment welcoming, supportive, and embracing of different expressions of Judaism.

[Scott Rechler]

Brian, Thank you for taking the lead on follow-up!

 

To all of you:

 

Thanks so much for making the week so wonderful.  It was great getting to know each of you -- and thank you for all your nuggets of wisdom, humor, inspiration, enthusiasm, thoughtfulness, and creativity.  And yes, "yo, what's that mean" is now officially part of my lexicon :)

 

I look forward to staying connected virtually -- and I look forward to seeing all of you again soon, be it in NH, DC, Philly, Boston, NY, Phoenix, LA, or somewhere in between!

 

Hope you all had safe travels home, and good luck with your transition back into the real world :)

 

Sending you all one more hug for now,

 

Scott

 

ps.  I will send a follow-up note later this week with the link to our Everett Fellows Program survey...

--
 
 
 

 

--

Scott Rechler

scot...@fastmail.fm

[Molly Zeff]

Hey Brian,

 

I'm still guesing who - almost finished.  And what's your phone number?

 

I loved hanging out with you!  Please come visit over Labor Day Weekend.  Please?

 

Molly

--
 
 
 

--
"When you want to effect positive change in society, do not look at the evidence and decide that your goals are impossible.  Do the impossible and change the evidence."

-Paraphrased by me; source unknown

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” 

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry