The Center for Modern Torah Leadership awards 2013 Summer Beit Midrash Fellowships. 2013 SBM will focus on the theme "Can you be sure you're Jewish if you can't prove it halakhically?"

 

SHARON, MA: The Center for Modern Torah Leadership, the intellectual catalyst of Modern Orthodoxy, is proud to introduce the Fellows for its 2013 Summer Beit Midrash. Fellows include men and women from leading universities, yeshivot, and seminaries with advanced textual skills and a passionate commitment to learning Torah in an environment that welcomes the moral challenges of modernity as spiritual opportunities and sees recognition of each human beings as a Divine Image as a fundamental assumption and telos of Torah study.   

The Summer Beit Midrash is an intense and exhilarating learning program that allows Fellows to pursue compelling questions with intellectual rigor and ethical integrity in the framework of a warm and challenging Orthodox community, and to experience themselves as active contributors to the halakhic conversation. This year's seminar, our seventeenth, will center on the theme "Can you be sure you're Jewish if you can't prove it halakhically?"; explorations of the religious experience, obligations, and rights generated by a subjectively compelling and objectively possible Jewish identity. Dates are June 26 through August 5 at the Young Israel of Sharon, 100 Ames Street, Sharon, Massachusetts. 

SBM is headed by CMTL Dean Rabbi Aryeh Klapper, with an array of distinguished guest lecturers. SBM Fellows will lead a variety of public learning opportunities during the seminar, including one-on-one study, thematic text-study groups, and formal classes. For more information about the summer, please contact Anne Sendor at moderntorahleadership@gmail.com. 

For general information about CMTL and its programs, as well as for many terrific articles and audio and video classes, please see www.torahleadership.org. 

Uri Carl, a native of Teaneck, NJ, will be graduating Yeshiva University this year with a major in mathematics and a minor in philosophy. Next year, he will be pursuing a Ph.D. in operations research. He is excited to participate in the SBM this summer and interact with other thoughtful and dedicated people, as well as learn from and contribute to the Sharon community.

Yakov Ellenbogen is a Sharon, MA native, and a 2012 graduate of Maimonides School. He spent the last year studying at Yeshivat Petach Tikvah and Yeshivat Shaalvim, and is excited to return to his studies in Israel next year at Yeshivat Har Etzion. Yakov particularly enjoys studying a variety of subjects including Midrashic literature and history, and is very much looking forward to learning with the Beit Midrash members and the Sharon community this summer. 

Yehuda Gale is a Maimonides graduate who currently lives in Brighton and will be a freshman at YU next year. He enjoys learning Tanakh in his spare time and is looking forward to contributing to and benefiting from the intellectually stimulating environment at SBM as he has for the last two years.  

Eliav Grossman spent much of his early childhood in Boston, and is excited to return to his New England roots this summer. Now a Riverdale, NY resident, Eliav graduated SAR High School in 2011 and spent the following year at Yeshivat Har Etzion. Having just completed his freshman year at Columbia, Eliav plans on studying Religion and Philosophy with an emphasis on Jewish studies. 

Tuvy Miller hails from Baltimore and is finishing his first year at Yeshiva University, majoring in English and (probably) Jewish Studies. After graduating from Yeshivat Rambam High School, he studied at Yeshivat Har Etzion for two years and will serve as the madrich for the Gush alumni who are arriving on campus for the fall semester. Tuvy is looking forward to a summer of serious learning, enjoyable conversations and meeting new people. He is excited about living in Sharon and hopes to build connections with the various community members.

Adena Morgan is entering her senior year at Brandeis University where she is a Judaic studies major and active in Hillel leadership. She is super excited to be back in Sharon after having an amazing summer at SBM in 2011. Adena is especially looking forward to sharing the experience this year with her younger sister Betsy and the rest of this year's participants. In her spare time Adena enjoys reading everything from fantasy to Jewish philosophy.

Betsy Morgan, from Yardley, PA, is completing her gap year at Nishmat. She will be attending Drexel University in the fall, to study engineering. While in Israel she participated in the Tikvah Israel Seminars. She will be joining us this summer with her older sister, Adena Morgan. She is very excited to be part of this outstanding group of Torah learners and deep thinkers.

Ezra Newman is a rising sophomore at Cornell University, majoring in Government and Near Eastern Studies. He is from Silver Spring, Maryland, and is a graduate of the Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy. After high school, he spent two years studying in Yeshivat Har Etzion (Gush), in Alon Shvut, Israel. Having spent the last two summers teaching and studying at the Beit Midrash in Camp Stone, he is looking forward to spending this summer taking part in a Beit Midrash with a different environment. He is particularly looking forward to meeting new people and participating in a program that encourages people to grapple with difficult practical and theological questions.

Yossi Quint is a native of Riverdale, New York. He has spent the past two years studying in Israel at HaKotel and Orayta and will be attending Princeton in the fall. He is an active member of the Jewish vegan community and serves on the board of the Shamayim V’Aretz Institute.

Sarah Robinson hails from Newton, MA, studied in Migdal Oz, and is a junior in Stern College majoring in Jewish Studies and Psychology. In her free time, Sarah enjoys intense discussions about English literature (particularly Jane Eyre), playing Bananagrams/Boggle, and learning gemara. Sarah is returning to the SBM, looking forward to another summer of learning and thought-provoking conversations.

Jason Samstein was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He is a rising sophomore in the Macaulay Honors College at Baruch College. He spent a year studying at Yeshivat Har Etzion. Jason is particularly interested in Jewish Philosophy and its relation to the Halakhic system, and he is very excited to participate in this unique Beit Midrash experience.

Jason Strauss, a native of Lawrence, NY, is an alumnus of Yeshivat Shaalvim, Columbia University (B.S.), and Harvard University (Ed.M.). He is a rabbinical student at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary and will be a Beit Midrash Fellow at SAR High School for the 2013-2014 school year. He previously served as a teaching intern at Maimonides High School in Brookline, MA from 2012-2013. He has taught weekly shiurim at Gabriel Project Mumbai, Columbia/Barnard Hillel, and Harvard Hillel and has published Torah articles in the Huffington Post, Times of Israel, and YU’s Beis Yitzchak. He also served as a summer rabbinic intern at the Riverdale Jewish Center in 2012. Jason is returning for his second summer at the Center for Modern Torah Leadership and is excited to be back in Sharon!