Orthodox union
Community Engagement
New Cohort Addresses Philanthropy, Cremation, Female Creativity & Education
NEW YORK – The Orthodox Union (OU), the nation’s oldest and largest umbrella organization for the North American Orthodox Jewish community, has announced its third cohort of six winning nonprofit organizations that it will support through its Impact Accelerator. The organizations chosen for this year’s cohort are working to address issues that impact the Jewish community including charitable engagement, promoting religious female creativity, reducing the number of Jewish bodies cremated, and education.
The OU Impact Accelerator is designed to provide mentorship-based growth and early-stage funding for Jewish nonprofit entrepreneurs with the next groundbreaking ideas, over the course of a 12-month program.
Dr. Mira Neshama Niculescu is a Teacher of Jewish Meditation. She received her Doctorate in Sociology of Religion from the Ecole de Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, and her certificate of “Jewish Mindfulness Teacher” from the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. She learned Torah at the Drisha Institute for Jewish Studies and is a Rabbinic Fellow at Beit Midrash Ha’ El in Jerusalem. She chairs the Clergy Council at Roots/Shorashim, and she teaches Torah and Jewish Meditation with Akadem, Applied Jewish Spirituality, Or Ha Lev, Pardes, Moishe House Europe and at various institutions internationally. Contact Me
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I’m not going to sugarcoat it.
Parenting an adult daughter who has Multiple Sclerosis (MS) has been painful, scary, and lonely. Especially doing so as a Jewish single parent.
The 4
th birthday. I always feel nauseous around that time of year.
She had recently started her adult life. She made aliyah and was studying neuroscience in a graduate program at Tel Aviv University, in Hebrew. And managing bimonthly Crohn’s treatments and tests and asthma flares. And adjusting to life in Israel and preparing for Shabbat and holidays and making new friends. I was proud and envious and reminiscing about my own aliyah.
Honors
Sen. Scott Wiener
State Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco has been named chair of the California Senate Mental Health Caucus, “which focuses on improving California’s resources for mental health and substance abuse disorders,” according to a press release from his office. Wiener has also been named Legislator of the Year by the California Marriage and Family Therapists for his work on Senate Bill 855, which “has made California a nationwide leader in mental health care,” according to the press release.
Zoe Fertik of Palo Alto has been accepted into the Jewish Women Scholars’ Writing Fellowship, a new program of Yeshivat Maharat, which is best known for ordaining women as Orthodox clergy, and Sefaria, the online repository of Jewish texts. “The shelves of the Beit Midrash are overwhelmingly dominated by books and articles written by men we want to change that,” says the fellowship website. “The fellowship aims to elevate Jewish women’s scholarship by b