Episode 29: Patience To Learn And Humility To Lead w/Dr. Erica Brown

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

— African Proverb

Dr. Erica Brown is an associate professor of curriculum and pedagogy at the George Washington University and the director of its Mayberg Center for Jewish Education and Leadership. She is the author of twelve books on the subjects of leadership, the Hebrew Bible and spirituality. Her forthcoming commentary is The Book of Esther: Power, Fate and Fragility in Exile.

She has been published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Tablet and The Jewish Review of Books and wrote a monthly column for the New York Jewish Week. She has blogged for Psychology Today, Newsweek & Washington Post’s “On Faith” and JTA. She tweets on one page of Talmud study a day at DrEricaBrown. Continue reading “Episode 29: Patience To Learn And Humility To Lead w/Dr. Erica Brown”

June 20, 2019October 18, 2019

Episode 28: The Messy and Beautiful Truth Behind Philanthropy w/Charlene Seidle

“A pious Jew is not one That worries about their neighbor’s soul and their own stomach; rather, a pious Jew is one that worries about their own soul and their neighbor’s stomach.”

— Rabbi Yisrael Salanter

Charlene is the Leichtag Foundation’s Executive Vice President. She has played a key leadership role in the development and implementation of Leichtag Foundation’s strategic framework and oversees grantmaking. She has designed innovative and creative programs such as funder partnerships and consortia, the Jerusalem Model, the International Office for Jerusalem Partnerships, the Hive at Leichtag Commons, and others; and provides overall management and strategy development.

Charlene won the 2013 JJ Greenberg Memorial Award, an international prize given to one outstanding philanthropic professional under the age of 40 each year. Continue reading “Episode 28: The Messy and Beautiful Truth Behind Philanthropy w/Charlene Seidle”

May 3, 2019October 18, 2019

Episode 21: Part Two – Tensions within Mussar w/Geoffrey Claussen

“Take time. Unclutter the mind….
Take time….. Unclutter …. the…. mind.”

Geoffrey Claussen is an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Elon University, North Carolina. He was the founding coordinator of Elon’s Jewish Studies program, which launched in Fall 2012, and he is the current chair of the Department of Religious Studies.

Prof. Claussen’s courses explore the history of Jewish traditions, from the Hebrew Bible to contemporary Judaisms. His scholarship focuses on Jewish ethics and theology, and he has particular interests in questions of love and justice, war and violence, animal ethics, moral formation, and the legacy of the nineteenth-century Musar movement. He is a past president of the Society of Jewish Ethics and is the author of Sharing the Burden: Rabbi Simhah Zissel Ziv and the Path of Musar (SUNY Press, 2015) and Modern Musar: Contested Virtues in Jewish Thought (JPS/University of Nebraska Press, forthcoming). Continue reading “Episode 21: Part Two – Tensions within Mussar w/Geoffrey Claussen”

April 26, 2019October 18, 2019

Episode 20: Two Part Series on Mussar – Deep and Real Communal Change w/Rabbi Marcia Plumb

““Whatever may obstruct me from reaching my goals, it is possible to bear the burden of the situation.””

— Alan Morinis, “Everyday Holiness: The Jewish Spiritual Path of Mussar”

Rabbi Marcia Plumb is the Rabbi of Congregation Mishkan Tefila in Brookline, Massachusetts. She was the Rabbi for London’s Akiva School and the Southgate and District Reform Synagogue. For 15 years, she was the Director of Spiritual Formation at Leo Baeck, the rabbinic seminary in London. She has also served as the Rabbi at the North London Progressive Synagogue, and Congregation Beth Shalom in Connecticut. Hoping to lead others on a path towards spiritual enlightenment, she founded Neshama: For Spiritual Wellbeing, a center for spiritual reflection, meditation and the study of Mussar literature. Rabbi Plumb was ordained at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, New York. She holds a Masters in Hebrew Literature from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles and a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Texas. Continue reading “Episode 20: Two Part Series on Mussar – Deep and Real Communal Change w/Rabbi Marcia Plumb”

October 4, 2018October 18, 2019

How My (Prayer) Life Changed When I Stopped Trying To Change

I live in the United States and as far as I can tell we value tackling problems head on and solving them once and for all. Once we set our minds to something we expect to see results and to see them right away. Continue reading “How My (Prayer) Life Changed When I Stopped Trying To Change”