Rabbi Joseph Telushkin: Tzedakah is not Charity
November 5, 2009
Rabbi Joseph Telushkin was named by Talk Magazine as one of the 50 best speakers in the United States. Rabbi Telushkin is an Orthodox Rabbi and is the author of Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things to Know About the Jewish Religion, Its People and Its History, the most widely selling book on Judaism for the past two decades. Rabbi Telushkin’s other books include: Words that Hurt, Words that Heal, and A Code of Jewish Ethics: You Shall be Holy.
Matt Flannery: Helping Through Empowering
November 19, 2009
In 2004, Matt Flannery witnessed the power of microfinance firsthand while on a trip to East Africa. He started a company called Kiva Micro Loans. While filming interviews with small business entrepreneurs he was able to see and hear how small grants of only $100 – $150 had been used to build small businesses which could then support a family. In October 2005 Kiva announced to the world the first peer-to- peer microlending website. Since its birth Kiva has grown from a small personal project to one of the world’s largest microfinance facilitators, connecting entrepreneurs with millions of dollars in loans from hundreds of thousands of lenders around the world.
Dr. Arye Cohen: What’s so Jewish ‘bout Peace, Love & Understanding?
December 3, 2009
Dr. Aryeh Cohen is Professor of Rabbinic Literature at the University of Judaism. He has taught at Hebrew Union College/ Jewish Institute of Religion, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and Brandeis University and is the author of Rereading Talmud: Gender, Law and the Poetics of Sugyot and co-editor of Beginning/Again: Towards a Hermeneutics of Jewish Texts. Dr. Cohen is past president of the Progressive Jewish Alliance and is helping to found the Jewish Community Justice Project. He has been a participant in the Scriptural Reasoning Group, a project of Princeton University, as well as the Scriptural Reasoning University Group at the University of Cambridge.
Nigel Savage: Keeping Kosher in the 21st Century: The New Jewish Food Movement
January 7, 2010
Nigel Savage founded Hazon, now the largest environmental organization in the American Jewish community, in 2000. He worked previously in the English equivalent of Wall Street, and was a founder of New Israel Fund in the UK. He studied at Georgetown, Pardes, Yakar and Hebrew University. He has spoken and been published widely, was a founder of Limmud NY, and is a member of the Limmud International board. In 2008 he was listed in the Forward 50 – the Forward’s annual list of America’s 50 most influential Jews, together with Rahm Emanuel, Jon Stewart and Sarah Silverman, among others. Hazon was recognized in that year by the Sierra Club as one of 50 leading faith-based environmental organizations
