HONORS
A team of students from The Kehillah School in Palo Alto, led by seniors Chava Roy and Charlotte Kofman and advised by dean of Jewish studies Moshe Goodman, has won the Maimonides Moot Court High School Competition, which is run by Hadar, an egalitarian yeshiva in New York. Students in the competition have a chance to argue a contemporary ethical issue in Jewish law. This year’s case was about the halachic issues surrounding pediatric organ donation.
Jewish LearningWorks has concluded the third cohort of its Voices for Good Fellowship, a two-year leadership development program for women who work in Jewish organizations. The 2024-2026 cohort included 14 women, including nine from the Bay Area: Erica Aren of JCCSF, Rabbi Julie Bressler of Temple Sinai, Rachel Dubowe of Camp Newman, Megan Edelman of the Diller Tikkun Olam Awards, Jenna Hanauer of the Jim Joseph Foundation, Lauren Ngoi of the Peninsula Jewish Community Center preschool, Rabbi Sarah Joselow Parris of Congregation Emanu-El, Emily Simons of San Francisco Hillel and Natasha Weiss of Rosov Consulting.
Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (JIMENA) is welcoming its tenth cohort of participants to its Sephardic Leaders Fellowship. The cohort includes 20 “emerging and established Jewish communal professionals, scholars, and activists committed to deepening their Sephardic knowledge and strengthening Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish life and representation in the Bay Area and beyond,” according to JIMENA. Among them are a number of senior Bay Area communal professionals, including Branden Johnson, associate director of Hillel at Stanford; Lee Nissman, Judaic Studies teacher at The Brandeis School of San Francisco; Gregg Drinkwater, program director on antisemitism education at UC Berkeley; Stacey Saady, curriculum specialist at the JFCS Holocaust Center; Esther Emergui Gillette, director of administration at the Wornick Jewish Day School in Foster City; Tamar Levin Shamay, educator at Temple Sinai Oakland; Edna Vaknin, site director at JCCSF Brotherhood Way; Jillian Osheroff, programs manager at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco; Talia Elfezouaty, Hillel Ezra Springboard Fellow at San Francisco Hillel; Avihay Saady, programming and engagement associate at Hillel of Silicon Valley; Rory Katz, assistant director of the antisemitism education initiative at UC Berkeley; and Simone Miller, marketing manager at the JFCS Holocaust Center.
Nika Greenberg and Heidi Kallen have won this year’s Impact Awards from EarlyJ, an organization that supports Jewish early childhood education in the Bay Area. Greenberg won the Director Impact Award for her work as senior director of early childhood education at Congregation Emanu-El preschool in San Francisco, while Kallen won the Educator Impact Award for her work as educator and gardening specialist at Gan Ilan Preschool at Temple Isaiah in Lafayette. Greenberg and Kallen both received a $10,000 prize, plus $5,000 to fund new initiatives at their preschools.
Five local Jewish leaders have won awards from Jewish Federation Bay Area. Philanthropist Susie Sorkin received the Judith Chapman Memorial Women’s Leadership Award, while Diller Educator Awards went to Rivky Spalter, lead teacher at Chai Preschool in San Mateo; Rina Mangurten, Jewish studies teacher at Wornick Jewish Day School in Foster City; Jonathan Bayer, music specialist at Congregation Beth Sholom in San Francisco; and Kiyomi Gelber, senior director of equity, inclusion and justice at Camp Tawonga. Sorkin will be honored at the federation’s Women’s Leadership Celebration on May 27 at the Beacon Grand Hotel in San Francisco. The Diller award recipients will be honored at the federation’s Year in Review on June 14 at Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco.
Anita Friedman, executive director of Jewish Family and Children’s Services, will be honored with the Earl Raab Award by Jewish California. Raab was the longtime director of the Bay Area’s Jewish Community Relations Council and a columnist in this publication. Jewish California, which recently changed its name from Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California, gave the award to Friedman at its annual Capitol Summit, held May 11-12 at the Sheraton Grand in Sacramento.
COMINGS & GOINGS
The board of Taube Philanthropies has elected Dianne Taube as its next chairman and CEO. Taube has previously served as vice chairman and president, and steps into her new roles following the death of her husband Tad Taube last year at the age of 94. “Taube Philanthropies has supported groundbreaking initiatives spanning continents—from San Francisco’s leading arts institutions to major cultural and historical projects in Europe,” the S.F.-based foundation wrote in a press release. “Under Dianne’s leadership, the foundation is accelerating its investments in youth mental health, education, medical innovation, and Jewish life and culture, while pursuing new, high-impact collaborations in programs supporting civic life and public policy research.”
HAPPENINGS
This spring, Len Connolly, senior director of facilities and security at Jewish Silicon Valley, celebrated 40 years of service to the Jewish community. His career began in 1986 at the Young Men’s Hebrew Association in Winnipeg, Canada, where he worked as a shift engineer. In 2005, he began working at the Jewish Federation of Silicon Valley, which later merged with the Addison-Penzak JCC to become Jewish Silicon Valley. “I told myself when I started that I would stay as long as I was challenged and engaged with the community,” Connolly said in a statement from JSV. “I’m still here because there is simply nowhere else I’d rather be.”
Santa Clara University and Hillel of Silicon Valley hosted their second regional Summit on Antisemitism on April 24. Forty administrators from the five campuses served by Hillel of Silicon Valley attended “for a day of learning, reflection and action,” HSV said in an email to the community. “The strong turnout reflected growing recognition that addressing antisemitism requires both urgency and sustained institutional commitment.”
OPPORTUNITIES
Jewish Family and Children’s Services is offering scholarship grants up to $3,000 and low-interest school loans up to $6,000 to local Jewish students for college, grad school or vocational training. Applications are due on June 4.