“You came all the way to Israel just to volunteer?” Yes, we did, actually. Thanksgiving weekend saw a rash of devastating wildfires across Israel, and in particular, in Haifa, our sister city. 60,000 residents were evacuated as the sky filled with smoke and flames, fires raced up the valleys in between residential neighborhoods, and dozens of homes and buildings were damaged or destroyed across the city and the Carmel region…. Read Article →
All posts by Daniel Brosgol
“The More We Get Together”
You’re no doubt familiar with the children’s song “The More We Get Together” (but in case you’re not, watch the video here). Other than providing us with a humorous musical reminder of our childhoods, though, it also is a powerful and relevant message relating to our work at Prozdor on the leading edge of Jewish education and engagement. Last week I joined over 50 of my colleagues in attending a… Read Article →
Online Learning For Jewish Teens: You Bet It Works
This piece first appeared in the December 8, 2015 issue of E-Jewish Philanthropy. Jewish teens love to be online. And they also love to be at camp. Take our word for it – we see well over a thousand of them every year in the various programs that our two organizations, Prozdor of Hebrew College and the Eli and Bessie Cohen Camps, operate. When the two of us got together in the fall… Read Article →
Making Time, Not Wasting Time: Teen Philanthropy at Prozdor
Time is a scarce resource. And it’s getting scarcer as the world provides us with any number of ways to waste it. And if you think the age of technology and going to bed with your tablet gives us adults ample opportunity to be distracted, imagine how many more ways teens can spend time doing absolutely nothing at all. Case in point: Twitch. You know what Twitch is? It’s an… Read Article →
A Wintry Mix
Last Friday, after an overnight flight from Philadelphia, we arrived to an overcast sky in Tel Aviv and by the time we reached the Jerusalem hills the skies had darkened, the rain fell, and the windows were fogged up from the heat trapped inside the bus. For those that had never been to Israel before, it probably felt surreal- a long transatlantic flight, a dark and rainy drive to a… Read Article →
The Whole World Is A Sukkah: Intergalactic Judaism
I’ve probably taught 20 different courses over the past 11 years at Prozdor. While most have been about Israel and the Bible, every now and again I take a shot at something new. This semester I had a crazy idea: what would it be like to teach a class about how Judaism would look, feel, and be celebrated differently if it wasn’t an Earth-based religion? How we would we mark… Read Article →
Leviathan And Godzilla: Mythic Creatures And Jewish Texts
I’m a summer movie kind of guy. I like doomsday, special effects, dramatic corny dialogue and exhilaration. Case in point: I saw “Independence Day” five times in theaters. (For those of you who are curious, it’s actually not the movie I saw the most times in theaters; that title belongs to “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” which I saw six times back in the ’80s.) The summer movie… Read Article →
Far Away and Still at Home: Israel and Our Interfaith Family
When a Jewish kid from Boston met a Catholic girl from Rhode Island in a Waltham basement fifteen years ago, I’m sure no one looked into the future and saw us happily married with a boatload of kids. But in this world, you never know what will happen, and here we are. It may not have been love at first sight, and like many relationships, the early days weren’t the… Read Article →
The Omer, Extra-Time Goals, and Babies: Is Timing Everything?
When I was little, I was notoriously impatient and notoriously meticulous. I would look at older kids and want to be older. I would count down the days until vacations or camp with anticipation and diligence. I would follow the train schedule stop-by-stop on the way from Boston to Washington seeing how many minutes late or early the train was. It was frustrating, but also gave me a clear goal… Read Article →
Diversity: A Reflection
Growing up in Belmont, I knew about Bedford in two distinct ways. First, that the Marshall’s in Bedford was the best one around. Second, that Bedford was on the way out to “The Swamp,” which is what my parents called Great Meadows. That was about it. Now that I’ve been a homeowner and resident in Bedford for seven years, though, it’s quite surprising to see Bedford in the international headlines… Read Article →