Dr. Ephraim Kanarfogel, of Teaneck, NJ, has been appointed a University Professor at Yeshiva University, the sixth faculty member in the entire University to be granted this prestigious distinction. His new title, bestowed upon him by YU President Richard M. Joel, designates him as the E. Billi Ivry University Professor of Jewish History, Literature and Law.

Dr. Ephraim Kanarfogel

The title of university professor is reserved for those who have achieved outstanding goals in teaching, publications and research.

“It is a great honor, well deserved,” said Dr. Lawrence H. Schiffman, vice provost for undergraduate education. “Dr. Kanarfogel’s overall contribution to Yeshiva University and his prodigious scholarship and publications make him a fitting holder of a university professorship. His extensive use of unpublished manuscripts and his methodological sophistication have made possible pioneering, original scholarship.”

Kanarfogel, ’73YUHS, ’77YC, ’79R, ’87BR, has spent more than four decades at Yeshiva, first as a student and then in various teaching capacities over the past 32 years. He teaches Jewish history at YU’s Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies and at Stern College for Women, and is the founding and current director of the Rebecca Ivry Department of Jewish Studies at Stern, established almost 28 years ago.

“I believe that I am the first university professor to have been ‘born and bred’ and trained completely at Yeshiva, through high school, college, the semicha program, the kollel and my doctorate,” Kanarfogel said. “Yeshiva always taught us, from our student days, that mastery and creativity are the hallmark of great scholarship and learning, and I am very proud to be able to transmit these values to my students and to give back to the yeshiva–and the university–that has given me so much.”

For now, Kanarfogel plans to continue teaching at Revel and Stern, “and share with my students the fruits of my research and academic studies,” he said. “This designation will allow me to expand my involvement in international conferences and publications, and to continue to produce trenchant scholarship on the highest level of academic Jewish Studies.”

Under Kanarfogel’s leadership, Stern’s Jewish Studies Department “has developed into the leading Jewish studies center for Orthodox women,” Schiffman said.

“From first encountering Dr. Kanarfogel as a student in a biology course I taught at Yeshiva College, to appreciating his early years as a faculty member at Stern College, to watching his meteoric rise as an academic star, I have grown to respect and admire both the man and his work,” said Dr. Karen Bacon, the Dr. Monique C. Katz Dean of Stern College. “I applaud his past successes and look forward to his future contributions to his students, to his scholarly work and to Yeshiva University.”

At Revel, he teaches a wide variety of courses, which are a central component of the curriculum for both master and doctoral students. He also guides doctoral students as they prepare for their general examinations and in the writing of their dissertations.

But his scholarship extends well beyond the classroom. “Professor Kanarfogel is a world-renowned authority on Franco-German Jewry in the Middle Ages with an emphasis on its Talmudic and broader cultural pursuits,” said Dr. David Berger, dean of Revel and the Ruth & I. Lewis Gordon Professor of Jewish History. “His appointment as University Professor constitutes much-deserved recognition of his key contributions as a prolific scholar, gifted teacher and devoted mentor.”

Drawing upon his impressive research skills and publications, Kanarfogel recently won the fifth Goldstein-Goren prize for the Best Book in Jewish Thought from the International Center for Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University. The $30,000 prize–given once every three years–was awarded to Kanarfogel for his book, The Intellectual History and Rabbinic Culture of Medieval Ashkenaz, published by Wayne State University Press last December.

The book was selected from a record-breaking 80-plus submissions and focuses on the intellectual pursuits of the Tosafists, who flourished in northern France and Germany during the 12th and 13th centuries.

“It’s an unusual, exceptionally thorough and learned treatment of Tosafist intellectual activity,” said Professor Gerald Blidstein of Ben-Gurion University, the head of the international committee of judges. “This work, which provides a new perspective on Tosafist creativity, will become a standard reference in the field.”

Kanarfogel will be sharing the prize with fellow winner Roni Weinstein, who wrote Breaking of the Vessels: Kabbalah and Jewish Modernity, published by Tel Aviv University Press. “To receive the approbation of an international body of academic peers in this very dramatic way is quite gratifying,” said Kanarfogel. “Moreover, this award means that I have been able to bring to the attention of the scholarly community–and interested readers more broadly–a group of rabbinic scholars and a period that is not as well-known or as understood as some others.”

Kanarfogel is a past winner of the National Jewish Book Award, the only multiple winner of the Samuel Belkin Memorial Literary Award, and a lifetime fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research. He recently signed a contract for a new book on rabbinic attitudes toward apostasy in the medieval and early modern periods, and has been invited to Europe for a series of conferences and presentations. “In our modern age, it is more important than ever to be as familiar as possible with our rich Jewish past and heritage, and to allow others to share in that endeavor,” he said.

In 1958, newly-ordained Rabbi Norman Linzer decided to do something different with the semicha he had just received from Yeshiva University-affiliated Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS).

Rather than lead a congregation, Linzer wanted to pursue a career in Jewish communal work. So he turned to YU’s Wurzweiler School of Social Work, which had opened its doors the year before, to pursue a degree that would equip him with all the right tools to accomplish his dream.

Linzer has been there ever since.

On June 12, Wurzweiler held a tribute event to celebrate Linzer’s 47 years at the school before his retirement this summer from his current position as Samuel J. and Jean Sable Professor of Jewish Family Social Work. Attended by his students, colleagues and mentors, the event reflected on Linzer’s journey from student to professor, and the many lives he touched along the way.

“An international leader, scholar and colleague extraordinaire, Dr. Linzer’s passion is teaching and he loves to teach and be taught by inquisitive minds,” said Dr. Carmen Ortiz Hendricks, Wurzweiler’s Dorothy and David I. Schachne Dean. “We can’t thank Dr. Linzer enough for his contributions to Wurzweiler and all his efforts toward making us a nationally and internationally renowned school of social work.”

A 1955 graduate of Yeshiva College and 1958 graduate of RIETS, Linzer received his master of social work from Wurzweiler in 1960 before joining its faculty as assistant professor in 1966. He earned two additional degrees—a master’s from the New School for Social Research in 1972 and a PhD there in 1974—and published five books, one of which, The Nature of Man in Judaism and Social Work (Commission on Synagogue Relations, Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York, 1978), remains a foundational text in Jewish Social Philanthropy, a required course for all Wurzweiler students designed by Linzer.

Linzer served as acting dean of Wurzweiler from 1989-90 and has held his current title since 1991.

“By his values, by his manner, by his interest in others, by his concern and his loveand by his self-effacing strength, Dr. Norman Linzer has been an absolute poster child for what Yeshiva University is, what it aspires to be and for what it says to the world,” said YU President Richard M. Joel in his remarks at the event. “The work he has done, both in teaching and in his profession, and in the realest and most tangible of ways, is the very manifestation and translation of Torah Umadda, the philosophical underpinning of this great institution.”

Dr. Morton Teicher, Wurzweiler’s founding dean, delivered the evening’s key tribute, recalling how Linzer had excelled as a student in the school’s inaugural class. “He was one of the best students, and when we appointed him to the faculty in 1966 he proved an excellent faculty member and a fine colleague,” Teicher said. “He was always considered a very valuable asset to the school, as evidenced by his steady promotions until he reached a full professorship and named chair.”

“Norman Linzer was the first professor I met when I began my master’s program at Wurzweiler and I knew on the very first day that he would have an enormous influence on my life,” said Dr. Lynn Levy, an assistant professor at Wurzweiler, in a tribute video titled, “Norman Linzer, Full Circle: Celebrating a Career of Accomplishment and Distinction,” which was screened at the event. “As a teacher, he has the ability to inspire, and as a friend, he has the capacity for enormous empathy, kindness and a generosity of spirit that is incomparable.”

Dr. Saul Andron, Hausman Chair in Communal Work and associate professor, has been Linzer’s colleague at Wurzweiler for seven years. “Norman has demonstrated a steadfast commitment to values-driven social work education and ethical professional practice,” he said. “He’s been a trusted mentor, adviser and supporter as I took on the role of director of the Certificate in Jewish Communal Service, a program Norman started over 20 years ago. He has left an indelible and lasting mark on Wurzweiler.”

Rabbi Noach Schwartz, a 2005 graduate, remembered how Linzer had helped him complete his studies at Wurzweiler and obtain his license. “Right now I have a practice in Brooklyn and I work with exactly the people you dreamed of,” he told Linzer in the video. “Your dream became a reality.”

To make sure the dream continues, Wurzweiler has established a scholarship in Linzer’s honor, the Diane and Norman Linzer Endowed Scholarship. Linzer himself pledged $25,000 to help establish the scholarship and an additional $27,000 has been raised by both current and former students, colleagues, friends and the Linzer family.

Looking back on his own career, Linzer shared the reason he never left the school. “I felt at home here,” he said. “Whether it was through faculty colleagues, the courses I taught, the supervision I received in the course of teaching, the opportunities that the school provided for me in terms of giving lectures at outside conferences, presenting papers or developing myself intellectually—all of those came true for me right here during the course of my career at Wurzweiler.”

To learn more about the Diane and Norman Linzer Endowed Scholarship, please contact Gail Burkett at 212.960.0872.

President Richard M. Joel has appointed Rabbi Josh Joseph as senior vice president of Yeshiva University.

Rabbi Josh Joseph

In addition to his current responsibilities as chief of staff, Joseph will launch the next phase in the University’s strategic planning process and guide its university-wide implementation. He will also work to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of various departments around the University, developing collaboration opportunities and proper partnerships between and among faculty, administration, staff, students and trustees.

“Rabbi Joseph will, together with the senior vice president for academic affairs, have operating responsibility for the administrative and academic aspects of the University,” said President Joel. “As those of you who know Rabbi Joseph can attest, he has brought dedication, energy, professionalism and passion to all he has undertaken. Together with all our colleagues, his skills will be essential in advancing the story of Yeshiva University.”

“I am grateful to work alongside President Joel and our incredible team of colleagues here at Yeshiva,” said Joseph. “In my newly expanded role, I look forward to playing a part in developing this institution in creative and constructive ways.”

A native of Montreal, Joseph worked on Wall Street for several years and as a community rabbi. He completed his undergraduate degree, majoring in diplomatic history, with honors at the University of Pennsylvania, received his rabbinic ordination from YU-affiliated Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary while simultaneously completing a master’s in Jewish philosophy at YU’s Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies. Joseph had previously served YU vice president, and before that as director of special projects for YU’s Center for the Jewish Future.

He resides in Lawrence, NY, with his wife Julie and their three children, Zach, Ozzie and Marsha.

In his introduction of Dr. Ruth R. Wisse, Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University, Rabbi Dr. Meir Y. Soloveichik described her as a renowned scholar and courageously outspoken supporter of Israel, as an “eishet chayil” [woman of valor].

“You know what they say about the eishet chayil—she ran off with an officer,” quipped Wisse, playing on the Hebrew phrase’s other literal meaning, “wife of a soldier.”

The line was one of several funny moments at the Yeshiva University Museum, which hosted a conversation between Wisse and Soloveichik about Jewish jokes and Wisse’s newest book, No Joke: Making Jewish Humor (Princeton University Press, 2013) on June 11.

The event, attended by 200 people, marked the second installment in the “Author Conversation Series” under the auspices of YU’s Zahava and Moshael Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought—directed by Soloveichik, who was recently appointed as rabbi of Manhattan’s Congregation Shearith Israel. Sponsored by Pamela and George Rohr in honor of Wisse, the event was presented jointly by the Tikvah Fund (co-sponsor of the Library of Jewish Ideas series, in which No Joke appears), the Straus Center and the YU Museum.

Although much of the conversation prompted hearty laughter, Wisse stressed that Jewish humor also has a serious side, hence the title of her book.

Much of Jewish humor “has a lot to do with how Jews—perhaps not alone in this world, but to a degree—have to balance two kinds of existence simultaneously,” said Wisse, noting a discrepancy between traditional Jewish belief in divine intervention and the frequent need to deal with an unfavorable reality.

To illustrate this point, Wisse and Soloveichik mentioned the biblical matriarch Sarah, who laughs when she is told she will bear a child in old age. Wisse also referenced the tragicomic prayer of Tevye the Dairyman, the most famous character of Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem: “God will provide, but if only He would provide until He provides.”

“Is this faith or is this skepticism?” challenged Wisse, highlighting the precarious balance between the two in the modern Jewish experience. “I think you can read it the way you want.”

Other topics discussed over the course of the conversation included the misguided American Jewish perception of the Yiddish language as inherently comic or as a repository of all Jewishness, the variance of Jewish humor according to time and place, the role of Jewish literacy in determining comedic content and the idea of the inept “schlemiel” archetype as a paradigm for moral standards.

Another topic of conversation was Jewish particularity versus universality, a major theme in Jewish humor that sometimes elicits discomfort. “The biggest value in the university today is that you can be whoever you want to be,” said Soloveichik. “But maybe what these jokes are picking up on is that in your Jewishness and your very blood, you’re supposed to feel this tension.”

While growing up, YU Museum Director and Stern College for Women Art History Professor Jacob Wisse—Ruth Wisse’s son—never would have expected his mother, the family’s “proverbial straight man” to write a book on Jewish humor. However, he said he now realizes she is particularly well-suited to the task. “Well-groundedness and intelligence; steadiness and commitment to truth; serious of purpose and resoluteness in the face of absolute chaos,” he said, “turn out to be the very qualities needed to contextualize, bring to life and explain Jewish humor.”

The audience seemed to agree.

“It was really spectacular,” said Senator Joe Lieberman, who attended the event with his wife, Hadassah. “Rarely do you have an evening that is so intellectually stimulating and hilarious.”

On Wednesday, June 12, the Human Resources Department presented Staff Appreciation Day on Yeshiva University’s Wilf Campus. Hundreds of faculty and staff participated in the annual picnic that recognizes University employees for all of their contributions.

Appreciation Day for YU employees at other Manhattan campuses was held on June 11 at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law’s Brookdale Center Lobby and will be held on June 13 on the Beren Campus Schottenstein Residence Hall.

It’s been more than seven months since Hurricane Sandy struck the greater New York region and some areas continue to suffer the storm’s ravaging effects. When Elana Polster, a Presidential Fellow at Yeshiva University’s Center for the Jewish Future, heard that volunteers were still needed to assist in the recovery, she mobilized 10 students and recent graduates from YU and partnered with Nechama, a disaster relief organization, to run a four-day mission to Long Island where students worked to rebuild damaged homes.

A group of YU  students and recent graduates primed and painted this house damaged by Sandy in Lindenhurst, NY.

“What intrigued me about this mission was that months later, there was still work to be done and I wanted to help,” said participant Yitzy Frankel, a new Yeshiva College graduate. “It was really shocking to drive down there and see the water, houses and devastation that still remained.”

During the day, the students engaged in hands-on volunteer efforts, painting and caulking houses, installing dry wall and helping out in a soup kitchen. At night, they heard from community leaders who were impacted by Sandy or whose organizations were involved in relief efforts. Speakers included Rabbi Boruch Ber Bender, founder of Achiezer; Rabbi Jonathan Muskat of the Young Israel of Oceanside; Alexander Rapaport, founder of the Masbia soup kitchen; and representatives from Nechama, Ohel and the United Jewish Appeal-Federation.

“This mission was an excellent opportunity to be actively involved in restoring people’s lives from Hurricane Sandy,” said volunteer Erica Pirak, a recent Stern College graduate. “I met many incredible and selfless people who volunteer and work daily on the projects. It was extremely rewarding.”

Pirak was tasked with helping rebuild a house and apartment in Freeport, NY, which included priming, painting, tearing down damaged walls and replacing them with dry wall. A highlight of the mission was when the group’s bus driver, Maritza, put on a Nechama T-shirt and joined them in putting up dry wall. “It made me realize how contagious it is to want to volunteer, help others and to actualize the goodness that lies within the hearts of each individual,” Pirak said.

Shaina Joyandeh, Lila Bleich and Nechama Rollhaus prepare food at a Masbia soup kitchen in Brooklyn, NY.

Hearing from the various communal leaders opened the students’ eyes to the obligation of stepping up in a time of crisis and the struggle of juggling personal needs with communal ones. “Harriet Blank, program director at Ohel, spoke about how she balanced caring for her own family while simultaneously making sure Ohel members were safe,” said Pirak. “She really epitomizes the challenge to strike that balance that Rabbi Muskat calls being a ‘Klal Yisrael Jew,’ caring about one’s personal life as well as contributing to the Jewish community and to the world at large.”

According to Polster, one goal of the mission was “to expose the students to the entire spectrum of community leaders so that they could hear the different perspectives and see how they responded, organized services and provided reimbursement,” she said. “At the end, it was just so clear how much of a web was created from the Sandy experience and how individual community members and organizations joined together to form a larger network to help where it was needed.”

YU students have spearheaded numerous Sandy relief efforts throughout the year. Soon after the storm hit back in October, the Stern College for Women Student Council organized dozens of volunteers who went on foot to distribute bottles of water, snacks, flashlights and batteries, to residents of public housing units on the Lower East Side. Other students traveled to communities in Long Island and Brooklyn to help remove debris from homes and synagogues and distribute meals to affected families. In February, YU Seforim Sale organizers donated $10,000 towards rebuilding shul and school libraries affected by the storm.

A team of four students from the Samuel H. Wang Yeshiva University High School for Girls (Central) triumphed over 40 other groups to compete in the final round of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s NYC Urban Barcode Project, in which research teams use DNA technology to explore biodiversity in New York City. Vying for the $20,000 grand prize, the Central team of Faigie Feiner, Michal Leibowitz, Miriam Rosen and Mindy Schwartz placed fourth, winning honorable mention and a crimson ribbon in the finals at the Museum of Natural History on June 5.

Central students Faigie Feiner, Mindy Schwarz, Michal Leibowitz and Miriam Rosen

Led by faculty mentor Shulamith Biderman and assisted by Ruth Fried, head of Central’s Science Institute, and Jason Williams, course instructor in Research Methodology, the team used DNA barcoding to identify allergy-causing plants. The research project, called “No More Itching and No More Ditching,” focused on analyzing the species of plants surrounding Central and two other local schools. With close to 50 percent of school children worldwide sensitive to one or more common allergens, the goal of the project was to accurately identify the unknown plant species and determine whether those plants caused allergies, by comparing them to previously published lists of allergen-inducing plants species. The team’s results showed that “school-aged children are being exposed to health-threatening allergens on almost a daily basis.”

A second group of Central students—Evelyn Abramov, Leah Nouriyelian, Chayah Rosenblum and Jessica Weiselberg—was also selected to compete in an earlier stage of the NYC Urban Barcode project. Their research analyzed the presence of echinacea purpurea in medicinal supplements. Both groups were accepted into the competition on the basis of the “originality, creativity, relevance, plausibility and scientific merit” of their research proposals.

Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Rabbinical Theological Seminary (RIETS) and RIETS Rabbinic Alumni will present a tribute ceremony for all audiences to mark the 20th yahrtzeit [anniversary of death] of YU Rosh Yeshiva Rabbi Dovid Lifshitz zt”l on Sunday, June 16 at Yeshiva University’s Wilf Campus in Washington Heights.

The program will run from 9 – 11:30 a.m. and will include reflections from former students of Rabbi Lifshitz, including Rabbi Zevulun Charlop, dean emeritus of RIETS; Rabbi Yitzchok Cohen, RIETS Rosh Yeshiva; Rabbi Moshe Weinberger and Rabbi Benjamin Yudin.

“From his early years as the chief rabbi of Suvalk to his lengthy career as Rosh Yeshiva at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, Rabbi Lifshitz was known as a brilliant Talmudic scholar and leader of the Torah community,” said Rabbi Yona Reiss, Max and Marion Grill Dean of RIETS. “But it was mostly as a teacher that he stood out, forging enduring and endearing relationships with his devoted students. For almost 50 years, his pupils at Yeshiva University—of which there were thousands—dubbed themselves ‘Reb Dovid’s students’—a testament to his warmth and devotion.”

Following Rabbi Lifshitz’s tenure at Yeshiva University, his discourses on Jewish tradition, knowledge and discipline were compiled and published by his students under the title Tehillah LeDovid. His Talmudic teachings were also published as Shiurei HaRav Dovid Lifshitz.

The program will take place in the Harry Fishel Beit Midrash of Zysman Hall (2540 Amsterdam Avenue) and will conclude with the recitation of Tehillim [Psalms].

For more information, please e-mail rabbinicalumni@yu.edu.

Yeshiva University students, alumni and faculty continue to fulfill their mandate to matter and are playing a major role in shaping the Jewish community. In The New York Jewish Week’s sixth annual “36 Under 36” section, several young social justice activists, educators and innovators from YU are recognized for their significant contributions to Jewish life:

• Rivka Abbe, Samuel H. Wang Yeshiva University High School for Girls
• Ariel Fishman, YU director of institutional research and assistant professor of management at Sy Syms School of Business
• Shira Greenland, Stern College for Women
• Doni Joszef, Wurzweiler School of Social Work
• Benjamin Ryberg, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
• Daniel Simkin, Sy Syms School of Business
• Pedram Tabibi, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
• Rebecca Yoshor, Stern College for Women

Congratulations!

Mock trial, debate, basketball and drama are all standard extracurricular activities found in many day schools, but less common is the ACE (Architecture, Construction and Engineering) Mentor Program of America, which exposes high school students to the different elements involved in design, engineering and construction careers.

Central students work on large scale overview map of their project rehabilitating Flushing Meadows Corona Park and LaGuardia Airport.

This past year, 15 students, in grades nine through 12, took part in the program at Samuel H. Wang Yeshiva University High School for Girls (Central)—the first yeshiva high school to institute an ACE chapter. The idea originated when a student approached Rabbi Seth Grauer, assistant principal of Central, and requested that an engineering elective be added to the senior class roster. After Grauer asked her to assess interest among her peers, she returned to him with a list of about 20 signatures.

“After I realized that this was something of great interest to a significant number of our students, I researched how best to implement it and got in touch with Kelly Smolar, a 2003 Central graduate, a Cooper Union graduate and a professional engineer,” said Grauer. “She was very interested in pursuing the idea, and after weighing things like student requirements and different schedules, we decided that instead of a class, we would apply to ACE to offer a club. Kelly really wanted students from all grades to participate and to expose younger students to engineering early on.”

The application process was complicated, but thanks to some assistance from Bruce Lilker, son of the late Dr. Martin Lilker, founding principal of YU High School for Girls, and a board member of ACE, Central was accepted and officially became the first yeshiva high school to feature an ACE chapter.

Every Tuesday night, about 15 students meet with Smolar as they work on a team project, modeled after a real-life project design team that includes different roles, such as architect, landscape architect, structural engineer, transportation engineer and a construction manager.

Over the course of the year, the group worked on a site plan redeveloping the land from Flushing Meadows Corona Park to La Guardia Airport. The students designed the complete site from soup to nuts while also hearing from industry experts who served as visiting guest speakers and invited the students to their offices to see practical applications of the concepts and hands-on tasks. The final product, replete with professional boards, models and a PowerPoint presentation, was shown to executives in the architecture, construction and engineering industries.

“Engineering is a very male-dominated field, and I’m usually pretty outnumbered, so I think it’s especially wonderful that Central is taking the lead in offering this engineering program to young women,” said Smolar. “I’ve greatly enjoyed mentoring the students, and have found that the inclusion of all ages has really enhanced the conversations on the design of the project.”

Participation in ACE is invaluable for students aspiring to one of these fields, since they gain access to a large network of scholarships and internships during their college years as a direct result of ACE participation. Since 1994, ACE has awarded over $12 million in scholarships to promising participants.

“We believe strongly that student interests should be taken seriously and that learning should be connected to the real world as frequently as possible,” said CB Neugroschl, head of school at Central. “The ACE program has allowed our students to become active learners in a discipline that is not typically available to yeshiva high school students. I am extraordinarily proud of our students, including our alumna, Kelly Smolar, for their dedication and hard work.”

To learn more about Yeshiva University High School for Girls visit www.yuhsg.org.

Led by President Richard M. Joel, more than 1,300 students, alumni, faculty, staff and friends of Yeshiva University marched up Fifth Avenue, cheering and greeting the crowds as they celebrated Israel’s 65th year of independence at the 2013 Celebrate Israel Parade on Sunday, June 2.

The student contingent included representatives from the University’s undergraduate schools, affiliated high schools, as well as YU’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Benjamin N. Cardozo School of law and their families.

Hundreds of students from Yeshiva University’s undergraduate schools were presented with their degrees at YU’s 82nd commencement exercises, held at the Izod Center in East Rutherford, NJ on May 30. Nine received the distinction of valedictorian, an honor that reflects exceptional academic achievement. As these accomplished graduates prepare to embark on the next stage of life and apply their talents to a range of careers, including law, medicine, education and finance, they remembered the vibrant Jewish life and rich academic and extracurricular experiences that shaped their undergraduate years at YU.

Valedictorians Ari Cuperfain, Jonathan Weiss, Dan Schindelheim, Chaim Szachtel, Ayelet Haymov, Sarah Rosenbaum and Meirah Shedlo. Not pictured: Mickael Herszkowicz and Boris Shulkin.

“Yeshiva University has provided my peers and me a place to foster our intelligence and recognize the world beyond the classroom by encouraging us to think outside the box, problem solve, and develop our minds and spirits,” said Ayelet Haymov of Cedarhurst, NY, who received the Dean Harold Nierenberg Memorial Valedictorian Award of the Sy Syms School of Business, together with Jonathan Weiss of Lawrence, NY.

Haymov, who will be working in the fall as a tax auditor at Deloitte & Touche, expressed her gratitude to YU for providing a formative and memorable undergraduate experience. “These past few years have been among the greatest years of my life,” she said. “The qualities we have gained from being in this institution have shaped our lives forever.”

Meirah Shedlo, the valedictorian of Stern College for Women, recalled her experience at YU as being “profoundly transformative.” As a history major, she served as president of the Stern College History Club and editor of Chronos, the undergraduate history journal. “The opportunity to work closely with my peers and professors created an atmosphere of collaboration, allowing me to learn from fellow students and mentors at the top of their fields,” said Shedlo, who hails from Baltimore, MD and plans to pursue a career in public history, research and law. “The preparation I received at YU was unparalleled, offering the values of Torah Umadda as well as a combination of the benefits of a small liberal arts college with extensive academic opportunity.”

Shedlo, Stern College valedictorian, addresses her fellow graduates at Yeshiva University’s 2013 commencement.

Other graduates emphasized the close relationships they were privileged to share with both faculty members and fellow students, which enhanced their undergraduate experiences.

“I decided on YU not only because of the strong academic curriculum combined with stellar religious learning, but also because of the attention they place on their students,” said Ari Cuperfain of Toronto, Ontario, the valedictorian of Yeshiva College. “I remember feeling very intimidated during my first few weeks at YU. However, the compassion I felt from my rabbis, professors and fellow students quickly helped to alleviate my anxieties. Especially with my family living over 500 miles away, YU has really been a second home to me.”

Cuperfain, a chemistry major who was active in the American Chemical Society Chemistry Club and YU’s Writing Center, plans to pursue a graduate degree in chemistry at the University of Toronto, where he is confident that the knowledge and skills he gained at YU will serve him well. “YU’s science curriculum has prepared me well for my continuing education. I have gained both theoretical exposure to chemistry through my lectures as well as hands-on skills from my labwork,” said Cuperfain, who was the recipient of the prestigious Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate NSERC Scholarship.

For Chaim Szachtel, the valedictorian of Isaac Breuer College, the lasting friendships he made and the opportunity to be part of the unique YU community highlighted his time at the school. “The friends I made and the kind of community I experienced in YU has changed my perspective on Judaism and has had a profound impact on me personally,” said Szachtel, a native of Monsey, NY.

Szachtel plans to attend medical school, drawing inspiration from his involvement with College EDge, a student-run organization that helps underrepresented public high school students attain a post-secondary education. “I know that we work to motivate students but the truth is that working with College EDge actually motivates me to become a physician by giving me a tremendous sense of fulfillment seeing the impact I could have on the lives of others,” Szachtel said. “Every student I interact with, both in public high schools and in YU as a resident advisor, pushes me farther along the path to becoming a physician.”

Hailing from Odessa, Ukraine, Boris Shulkin moved to Israel at age seven and later came to YU in search of a “spiritual journey,” said Shulkin, the valedictorian of the James Striar School of General Jewish Studies / Mechinah Program. “YU really helped me find myself,” he said.

Other valedictorians include Sarah Rosenbaum, Rebecca Ivry Department of Jewish Studies; Dan Schindelheim, Yeshiva Program/Mazer School of Talmudic Studies; and Mickael Herszkowicz, Irving I. Stone Beit Midrash Program.

More than 600 students from Yeshiva University’s undergraduate schools were presented with their degrees at YU’s 82nd commencement exercises, held at the IZOD Center in East Rutherford, NJ on May 30.

Excitement for the future was in the air as students and their families hugged and snapped pictures outside the crowded box office area. Miriam Barth, who received a degree in political science and Judaic studies and will begin graduate work at YU’s Wurzweiler School of Social Work this summer, decorated her cap with the words ‘Woohoo 2013!’. “It’s exciting and wonderful to spend the day with your family and the friends who have been with you your whole college career,” she said. “I’m very thankful to my parents and all my professors for the opportunities I had at YU, in academics and in student life.”

Zev Delott had two graduations to celebrate—his own and that of his wife, Erica Hasten. Their relationship developed while they were both students at YU and the two planned their academic schedules so they could graduate together. “It’s going to be surreal hearing our names called,” said Delott, who will pursue a career in marketing at a collection agency while Hasten begins her PhD studies at YU’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the fall. “This is a moment I’ve anticipated for so long.”

A shared sense of purpose and empowerment was an essential theme of the day’s celebration.

“Your experience at Yeshiva has been exciting, varied, formative and informative in magnificent ways,” YU President Richard M. Joel told the new graduates. “But as you look back now, realize that you’ve done something else—you’ve lit a candle. You’ve spun your own unique wicks from a variety of threads, ancient and modern all bound up in one, one informing the other, and both ignited by your drive to matter in the world and to make a difference.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DfGXjUpEaY

In his keynote address to the Class of 2013, Rabbi Joshua Fass—a proud alumnus of YU’s Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy, Yeshiva College, Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, and Azrieli Graduate School for Jewish Education and Administration—reflected on the way his own YU education had equipped him to pursue his difficult but world-changing vision as co-founder and executive director of Nefesh B’Nefesh, an organization that has helped more than 36,000 Western olim [immigrants] actualize their dream of settling in Israel.

“Heroically and astonishingly, YU transmits a unique and noble approach, a derekh ha-chayim [way of life], a mesorah [tradition] that resonates this extraordinary synergy,” he said. “We have been taught to open our eyes and see the myriad number of concerns that need to be addressed and repaired in our community and beyond, to have the fortitude and courage to make those changes, while being grounded securely in Torah and halakha [Jewish law].”

Urging the new alumni to remain engaged and active as members of the Jewish community andstaunch advocates of the State of Israel, Fass added, “As YU graduates, you are uniquely positioned to make a difference—you have the talent, conviction, passion and ideological drive to script the future story of our people.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lBVnsaOCFU

President Joel conferred an honorary degree upon Fass, as well as on Tony B. Gelbart, co-founder and chairman of Nefesh B’Nefesh and a serial entrepreneur who serves as a member of the nationalboard of directors and adviser to the president of the Jewish National Fund; businessman and philanthropist Abraham Naymark, whose contributions to YU include the establishment of the Naymark Scholarship Fund at the Sy Syms School of Business; and Merryl H. Tisch, chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents and chairwoman of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty.

Meirah Shedlo, valedictorian of Stern College for Women, echoed the message of engagement and responsibility in her remarks to her classmates. “As we, the Class of 2013, depart from the house of learning that is Yeshiva University, we have been charged with the mission of using our personal development in service of our communities,” she said. “At YU, we’ve had the opportunity to gain a stellar education and achieve a high level of accomplishment in our respective fields. Now we’re all starting on new paths that will build upon the ideas, challenges and triumphs we have encountered here.”

Dr. Mark Skier ’83YUHSB, ’87YC and ’91E, flew in from Milwaukee, WI to watch his son Rafi graduate Yeshiva College. “I’ve been a member of the YU family for a long time and when the time came to send our kids to college, we didn’t look anywhere else,” he said. “Where else could my son earn a world-respected education in a top-level academic environment, surrounded by other religious Jews, minyanim and Torah learning? I’m excited for the opportunities and mentorship he’s had here and I know they could only have happened at YU.”

To Alexa Rosenberg, who received a degree in linguistics and plans to pursue a career in government, the most important part of the day was that her father, Bill, got to see her graduate. “It’s a big accomplishment,” she said. “My dad put a lot of time and effort into helping me succeed in my college career and I’m excited to make him proud today.”

The reunion classes of 1963, 1973 and 1988 were recognized at the graduation ceremony for their 50th, 40th and 25th reunions, while in all, more than1,400 undergraduate students from Yeshiva College, Stern College for Women and Sy Syms School of Business, as well as graduate students in the fields of law, medicine, social work, education, Jewish studies and psychology, were awarded degrees from YU during its commencement season.

Phyllis Siegel ’63S couldn’t wait to watch her granddaughter, Lauren Berger, march down the aisle. “I’m very proud that she chose to attend Stern because YU serves a very important mission in the Orthodox world; it enables students to learn in an environment that supports Jewish values academically and professionally,” she said. “YU creates a sense of a greater family and community.”

In addition to celebrating Berger’s graduation, Siegel was excited to meet up with former classmates at her 50th class reunion. “It will be wonderful to see old roommates and friends again.”

Mark Weingarten started playing the violin at age three, thanks to some inspiration from a “Rechov Sumsum” video featuring Itzhak Perlman. Fast forward 18 years and that early love of music has propelled Weingarten, now a junior at Yeshiva College, to share that passion while connecting with patients during regular visits that he organizes for college students to the elderly, veterans and sick children.

Mark Weingarten plays the violin for veterans at the James J. Peters Veterans Affairs Medical Center in the Bronx.

While studying in Israel at Yeshivat Kerem B’Yavneh, Weingarten began playing music for patients at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Medical Center every Friday. When he came to Yeshiva University last year with his twin brother, Michael, they sought to replicate those efforts on a larger scale, resulting in the founding of Music Vs.—Musical Undergraduates’ Support Initiative for Children, Veterans and Seniors.

The program aims to use the universal language of music as a bridge to form connections with those less fortunate and to lay the foundation for lasting relationships.

“What’s unique about Music Vs. is that it seeks to transcend the impersonal atmosphere of large scale events in an attempt to create long term relationships with the people we visit,” said Mark.

On the Friday preceding Memorial Day, the Weingarten brothers were joined by close to 20 fellow students, undergraduate men and women from YU, who devoted two hours of their afternoon – in the midst of final exams – to visit war veterans at the James J. Peters Veterans Affairs Medical Center in the Bronx.

“We’re blessed to be able to spend Memorial Day weekend building on our relationships with veterans living in our community,” Mark said. “These missions provide us with incredible opportunities to learn from their fascinating life experiences. They also allow us to express an integral part of our heritage, our gratitude to the heroes who have given so much to defend this country and to preserve the freedoms which we enjoy today.”

The dreary, rainy afternoon was brightened by Music Vs.’s performance, as the audience clapped along to the singing, accompanied by students playing flute, guitar and violin. Rousing renditions of “God Bless America,” “America the Beautiful,” and the “Star Spangled Banner” brought smiles to the veterans’ faces.

“It’s a real treat to have these young people here,” said veteran Paul Haynes, a quadriplegic who served as a forward observer in Vietnam from 1967 to 1968. “The music soothes your soul. I love it.”

After the singing, the students, decked out in matching blue cardigans featuring the Music Vs. logo, mingled with the veterans, swapping stories and sharing personal histories with each other. Some continued to play their instruments, serenading the patients and taking additional song requests.

“We specifically try to visit those seemingly forgotten by society and even other charities,” said Michael Weingarten, who is motivated to participate in memory of his grandfather. “I seek to follow in his footsteps and use the gifts that God has given me to change the world, like he did, for the better.”

Drawing on its early successes, Music Vs. has now spread to other college campuses in New York and beyond. Schools that have organized events this year include Yale, Cornell, Queens, Lehman, University of Pennsylvania, Emory and Lander College.

Other members of the Music Vs. executive team include Isaac Kleinman, chief communications officer, and national directors Gavriel Apfel, a student at Lander College; Arieh Levi, a sophomore at YU’s Sy Syms School of Business; and Tova Weingarten (no relation to the founding brothers), president of the Music Vs. Club at Stern College for Women.

Tova looks forward to the events, knowing that just by visiting, she is able to make a difference. “Whether or not a student felt they connected well with a particular patient, everyone leaves knowing that they have uplifted the days of these patients and made their lives a little brighter,” she said.

Tova recalled how grateful she was when various visitors, many of whom were singers and musicians, came to visit her 90-year-old grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, when he broke his hip. “It was an opportunity to express my appreciation to all those who helped my grandfather for so many years and pay forward their tremendous acts of selfless kindness.”

A typical Music Vs. event – which can take weeks to plan and prepare for – features a group of students performing several songs, either of the Jewish tradition, related to an upcoming holiday or of a patriotic nature. Often, there is musical accompaniment as well.

“We generally try to get as many musicians as possible,” said Levi, who plays the guitar. “However, our goal is less to act as musicians and more to act as friends, using music as an ‘icebreaker’ of sorts. Therefore, we allow anyone to join our Music Vs. missions.”

Following the performance, students hold a meet-and-greet with the patients. The initial event is followed by more intimate visits. “Music slowly becomes a secondary part of our program as we forge a foundation for long-term relationships,” Mark explained. “By mobilizing students nationwide to reach out to others, we hope to ennoble the younger generation and thereby rekindle people’s faith in themselves, and consequently, in their fellow human beings.”

Like Music Vs. on Facebook.

A common spirit runs throughout Yeshiva University: the mandate to matter.

Students of all ages and backgrounds come here to pursue a range of professional and personal dreams, from scientific research and medicine to law, Jewish education or public policy. Our students seek to harness their unique talents and YU education to make a lasting impact on the world around them. This spring, when they graduate from YU, these new alumni will hit the ground running.

In the weeks leading up to Commencement, YU News will feature one remarkable graduate from each school, reflecting, in their own words, on their time here, their passions and their dreams for the future.

Meet the Class of 2013.

With the help of YU’s Anne Scheiber Scholarship, Einstein’s Tamar Weinberger is pursuing a career in pediatric medicine.

Name: Tamar Weinberger

School: Albert Einstein College of Medicine

Hometown: Woodmere, NY

Passion: Pediatric medicine

Why medicine?

I chose medicine because I saw it as an opportunity to combine my love for science with my desire to contribute to patient care. I also enjoy the academic challenge medicine presents: being confronted with myriad signs and symptoms, deducing a differential diagnosis and effectively diagnosing and treating a disease is a challenging and rewarding endeavor.

I’m hoping to become a pediatrician, although I may still specialize further within that field. I love not only the patient population but the way care is provided to children. Pediatricians fine-tune their treatments to the needs and emotional development of the child, whether that means using smaller test tubes, having extended visiting hours and accommodations so families can stay overnight, or drawing on incredible patience and understanding when interacting with patients. I also really like the science of pediatrics and the disease processes involved.

It is also a rewarding field because children have a greater tendency to bounce back quickly and you really see the impact your diagnosis and treatment can have. In one case, a child came to our emergency room in a lot of pain, complaining his ear hurt. After completing a thorough history and physical I diagnosed him with acute otitis media [ear infection] and the team prescribed the appropriate antibiotic. Two days later in clinic that same child was cheerfully bouncing around the waiting room, and when he spotted me across the room he ran over excitedly and offered me a gumball. While I accepted his token of appreciation, watching that transformation—from sick and in pain to happy and healthy—was my real reward.

How has the Anne Scheiber Scholarship helped in launching your medical career?

I had always thought about pursuing a career in medicine and one of the reasons I decided to attend Stern College for Women for my undergraduate studies was because I had heard about the Anne Scheiber Scholarship. The scholarship awards up to full tuition for Stern graduates pursuing medicine at Einstein. Yeshiva University helped me fulfill my passion for medicine by alleviating much of the financial burden. It also made me feel supported and believed in. Someone out there thought it was important for religious woman to achieve this goal and the message was “You can do it, we’ll help you.”

What has your experience been like at Einstein?

Einstein offered me an excellent education coupled with a great Jewish community and support system on campus. It also allowed me to work with a unique and very underserved patient population. The school is situated in the Bronx, where there are residents of various religious and cultural backgrounds, often of very little means. I had to learn to understand how my patients’ perceptions and feelings about medicine and treatment were influenced by their backgrounds and find solutions that would work in their specific situations, both financially and culturally.

Einstein also made it easier for me to study medicine because it’s respectful of my religious beliefs—we’re excused from all clinical duties on Shabbos and Yom Tov. It also offers a very family-friendly environment, which is great because my husband and I are both in school here and we have two children. The deans were accommodating about my schedule and some of my friends decelerated when they had children.

Have you had any mentors along the way who made an impact on you?

Dr. Miriam Schechter, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Einstein, is a big role model for me. She’s very motivated—we don’t know how she gets everything she does done, but she always has a smile on her face and seems to have enough time and energy for all her students and patients. No matter what’s on her plate, she focuses on you. She’s an amazing teacher and clinician and extremely caring and dedicated.

Was there a moment that really changed the way you looked at medicine?

Doctors are lifelong learners and every day I learn something new. But my first clerkship year helped shaped the way I viewed medicine as a whole. Once we were on rounds discussing a very sick patient and we just couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him. This went on for almost a week while we went through diagnosis after diagnosis and the patient was only growing sicker. Each day the attending physician came in with stacks of articles relating to the patient that she had spent countless hours at home researching. Not only was she spending the day taking care of her patients at the hospital, but she continued working on this case at home afterward. When I pointed this out to her she responded genuinely, “If it was my brother this is what I’d want his doctor to be doing.” It just clicked for me that medicine is about unconditional devotion, responsibility and support—treating your patients like family. That influences the way I care for my own patients.

A common spirit runs throughout Yeshiva University: the mandate to matter.

Students of all ages and backgrounds come here to pursue a range of professional and personal dreams, from scientific research and medicine to law, Jewish education or public policy. Our students seek to harness their unique talents and YU education to make a lasting impact on the world around them. This spring, when they graduate from YU, these new alumni will hit the ground running.

In the weeks leading up to Commencement, YU News will feature one remarkable graduate from each school, reflecting, in their own words, on their time here, their passions and their dreams for the future.

Meet the Class of 2013.

A former journalist, Cardozo’s Sara Levine hopes to continue fighting civil and human rights injustices as a lawyer.

Name: Sara Levine

School: Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law

Hometown: Westchester, NY

Passion: Asylum law

You began your career as a journalist for Israeli television. Why did you decide to pursue law?

Before law school, I worked as a journalist for the English nightly news. Because our news bureau was relatively small compared to the Hebrew and Arabic news departments, I was able to cover a large range of issues, from domestic politics to foreign affairs to civil rights and the law. It was this latter group that fascinated me the most. In particular, covering stories relating to marginalized groups and their struggle for the most basic, fundamental rights, both frustrated and motivated me. While I loved my job as a journalist and the challenges every day brought—the rigors of fact-finding, learning people’s stories, extracting the salient facts and effectively conveying stories to our audiences—I felt that something was missing. I knew that law was the key to making real change in society and fighting against the same injustices I covered as a reporter. The journalist is meant to educate, draw awareness and illuminate issues of the marginalized, the struggling and the voiceless. The lawyer, I realized, can give them a voice.

Why did you choose Cardozo?

I wanted to hit the ground running and get involved in direct-client work as soon as possible. With its internships and various field clinics, as well as course offerings in my precise areas of interest, Cardozo offered exactly what I was looking for. At Cardozo, I participated in the Immigration Law Field Clinic, working at the Immigrant Protection Unit at the New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG); the LGBT Leadership Practicum, working at the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBT Rights Project in their national office; and the Human Rights and Genocide Clinic, where I co-represented a Syrian man fleeing persecution.

I spent my two law school summers further exploring the passions that were shaped by my reporting background and law school experiences. After my 1L summer, I worked at an Israeli NGO in asylum law and refugee rights with newly-arrived African refugees and survivors of torture. After my 2L summer, I worked in NYLAG’s LegalHealth Unit, where I helped provide direct client services to low-income New Yorkers with serious health issues, in legal clinics inside city hospitals.

What kind of impact did these experiences have on you?

My first experience working with clients came after my first year of law school, when I worked in asylum law and refugee rights at a small, underfunded NGO in the slums of southern Tel Aviv.

I met Mary and her 2-year old son Valentine in a tiny, humid interview room. Over the course of several hours, Mary described their journey from ethnic-based persecution in Nigeria to surviving months of torture at a Bedouin-run smuggling and torture camp in the Sinai Desert and finally making their way, by foot, to Israel—a country they had never even heard of. I watched Valentine drawing mismatched shapes and patterns on a piece of paper I’d given him and it became real to me that it was now largely my responsibility to help them apply for legal protection and to keep them safe. The ability to use the law to drastically change people’s condition—and the sense of tremendous responsibility that came with it—was exhilarating, and confirmed the reasons why I chose law school. Although Mary and Valentine’s case is still pending, I was able to help them apply for asylum, obtain temporary protected status and receive work authorization.

Winning political asylum for my client in the human rights clinic was another unforgettable and powerful experience.

What will you be doing after graduation?

I am thrilled to have been selected as an Equal Justice Works Fellow. Equal Justice is an organization that provides an incredible opportunity for graduating law students and new attorneys to design a fellowship project—essentially creating your dream job—that focuses on serving a specific, unmet legal need in the community.

My fellowship project is rooted in my work as a reporter and shaped by my work experiences throughout my time at Cardozo. Equal Justice provided the perfect vehicle through which to integrate my passions—immigration and asylum law, human rights and civil rights—and NYLAG, where I worked the summer after my second year of law school, provided the perfect venue. I designed the Legal Health Immigrant Access to Healthcare Project, in which I will provide direct immigration representation to humanitarian-based immigrants with medical needs. I will also work with these clients to obtain the state Medicaid that they become eligible for upon the filing of their federal immigration claims. The goal of the project is to use a medical-legal partnership model to improve the overall well-being of low-income humanitarian-based immigrants with medical issues. I will work within existing Legal Health clinics in hospitals around New York City and set up my own clinics where necessary.

Meet more 2013 graduates. 

The upcoming summer semester will mark my fourth semester teaching online courses at Azrieli Graduate School. I have found the experience to be enriching, broadening, and stimulating. While some may envision online teaching as a direct transfer from the live classroom to the virtual setting, I perceive online teaching as a categorically different enterprise. Allow me to share three brief thoughts on my experiences teaching online, highlighting some of the unique features that I believe online learning affords.

1. Student processing of information

Student processing of material learned in my online courses is, in certain ways, far richer than in a traditional face-to-face course. This is due to a simple reason: students are asked to generate some kind of product on every topic they learn.

The driving force behind constantly asking students to produce is twofold:

(a) Accountability: In a live setting, a student’s physical presence indicates some minimal form of engagement with the  course and thus serves as a basic form of accountability. By contrast, the lack of a physical presence in an online course necessitates creation of accountability in other ways. I can assign an array of rich and stimulating resources to explore. However, without asking students to do something with that material, I have no way of ascertaining whether students even looked at the material, let alone engaged richly with the ideas therein.

(b) Promoting active learning: My preparation for each online learning module, that is, weekly learning unit, involves a two-step process: (1) “What is the most important content that I want students to master this week?” Once I identify my primary learning goals, I consider (2) “What learning experiences can I create to help my students master that material?” More often than not, this step of crafting active, meaningful, and engaging learning experiences requires far more time, creativity, and effort on my part than the preparation of the actual content. Though in theory this focus on the process of learning should be no different in a traditional course, I find the online course setting to be more promotive of this two-step preparation process. Perhaps this is because the online context lends itself less naturally to the traditional lecture format or because presenting a written explanation of each week’s module forces the instructor to carefully and sharply think through all elements of that week’s learning process.

Read the full article in eJewishPhilanthropy…

Ilana Turetsky, EdD is an instructor in Jewish Education at Yeshiva University’s Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration. The opinions expressed above are solely those of the author and should not be attributed to Yeshiva University.

Five Yeshiva College students have been selected to perform advanced undergraduate level research as part of the Henry Kressel Research Scholarship. Now in its sixth year, the scholarship program—established by Dr. Henry Kressel, chairman of the YU Board of Trustees,  managing director of Warburg Pincus LLC and a Yeshiva College graduate—offers students the opportunity to craft a year-long intensive research project under the direct supervision of University faculty.

Kressel Scholars Yoni Mehlman, Yosef Kornbluth, Mark Weingarten, Barry Cohen and Eli Grunblatt

This year’s recipients are Barry Cohen, Eli Grunblatt, Yosef Kornbluth, Yoni Mehlman, and Mark Weingarten.

The scholars will each receive a stipend of $6,000 for the year, along with appropriate research-support expenses. Following their research tenure, Kressel Scholars will be encouraged to share their work in professional and peer circles to stimulate a larger intellectual discussion on their chosen topic.

The students’ research, conducted under the guidance of a faculty member, will focus on a variety of subjects.

“One of the major sources of waste in the oil industry is the burning of natural gases above petroleum reserves to get to the oil below,” said Cohen, who will work with Dr. James Camara, visiting assistant professor of chemistry. “The goal of my research is to design and synthesize a metal containing catalyst that will facilitate the conversion of methane, which is a gas under atmospheric conditions, into methanol, which is a liquid under atmospheric conditions and is therefore more economical to transport.”

Grunblatt will be advised by Dr. Sumanta Goswami, associate professor of biology, as he investigates the molecular mechanisms by which breast cancer cells resist chemotherapy treatments and survive to metastasize. “In particular, I will be focusing on the role that the cellular DNA repair pathways play in mediating this chemoresistance,” said Grunblatt.

Kornbluth will study “The Cascade of Failures Caused by Overload in Interdependent Networks” under the guidance of his mentor, Dr. Sergey Buldyrev, professor of physics. “Until now, there have been two popular models to study how networks, such as electrical grids or communication lines, have failed,” explained Kornbluth. “One focuses on how sending too much traffic through a single bottleneck can cause the bottleneck to overload and fail, while the other observes how one network’s failures can affect another network. I plan on combining the two models in order to better predict and plan for these catastrophes.”

Working with Dr. Fredy Zypman, professor of physics, Mehlman’s research will focus on Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM), a technique used to measure the properties of a range of sample types at the sub-nano scale. “My research will attempt to use more precise physical models to expand the accuracy and range of applications of force-distance graph construction with AFM,” said Mehlman.

Weingarten will research “Effects of Aquaporin-4 on Lung Epithelial Stem Cell Differentiation” under the guidance of Dr. Yakov Peter, assistant professor of biology. “Throughout my tenure in the lab, Dr. Peter has constantly encouraged me to develop my own ideas and helped me tailor them to conduct my own experiments. His dedication to his students is remarkable,” said Weingarten, who plans to pursue his semikha studies at YU-affiliated Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary in the fall. “Our work has not only provided me with a foundation in research, but has also sharpened my analytic and decision-making abilities, as well as my ethical perspective.”

A common spirit runs throughout Yeshiva University: the mandate to matter.

Students of all ages and backgrounds come here to pursue a range of professional and personal dreams, from scientific research and medicine to law, Jewish education or public policy. Our students seek to harness their unique talents and YU education to make a lasting impact on the world around them. This spring, when they graduate from YU, these new alumni will hit the ground running.

In the weeks leading up to Commencement, YU News will feature one remarkable graduate from each school, reflecting, in their own words, on their time here, their passions and their dreams for the future.

Meet the Class of 2013.

Following his semikha studies at RIETS, Willie Roth will attend Harvard Law School in the fall.

Name: Willie Roth

School: Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS)

Hometown: Teaneck, NJ

Passion: Halakha and law

What is unique about semikha studies at RIETS?

RIETS is the only place where a rabbinical student can learn from first-rate talmidei chachamim [Torah scholars], poskim [deciders of Jewish law], rabbanim and mental health professionals all under one roof. Whether you’re in rabbanus [rabbinate] or Jewish education, a rabbi’s job entails many different responsibilities. You need training indifferent areas and exposure to many kinds of experts. RIETS offers a comprehensive and holistic approach to a rabbinical career.

RIETS also enabled me to continue learning seriously inits kollel while simultaneously gaining practical experience for the future. The school values the professional advancement of its students and provides generous scholarships toward master’s degrees at both YU’s Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration and the Bernard Revel Graduate Schoolof Jewish Studies.

In addition to finishing my studies at RIETS, I’m about to complete a master’s degree in medieval Jewish history at Revel, which I couldn’t have done without support from RIETS. I decided to study Jewish history because I wanted to broaden my knowledge base—I think it’s important for rabbinic figures to have expertise and interest in many areas. I’m also interested in exploring the field of legal academia in the future, and a lot of what I studied in Revel, such as History of Halakha with Rabbi Ephraim Kanarfogel, is a strong foundation for that—the development of law, legal history and legal theory over time.

You’ll be attending Harvard Law School in the fall. Are there similarities between your passion for Gemara and your fascination with law? How does the study of one enrich the other?

The requirement to understand concepts clearly and have information at your fingertips is important in law school and the intellectual rigor you develop through years of learning willdefinitely help you with that. A lot of the critical analysis you put into learning is also related to the approach people take in law school—how do you master knowledge and distill legal principles from a practical application of the law?

Still, my interests in Gemara and law are divergent. Halakha and Gemara are, first and foremost, the word of God. That can’t be understated. What’s so amazing is that you can really establish a unique, personal relationship with Torah because your ability to grasp it is totally up to you. You can get information from teachers, but to be successful at learning requires effort and motivation of your own. Once you’re able to achieve that, the relationship you have with it is singular and unique. I also like the study of halakha because it’s its own system with its own principles and concepts. I guess secular law is likethataswell. It’s the application of the principles to context and situations that really interests me.

Has there been a particular rabbi at RIETS that has made an impression on you?

My most memorable experience here has been the four years I spent learning in Rav Michael Rosensweig’s shiur [lecture]. The rigor and intellectual demand that it requires is unparalleled by any of my academic pursuits to date. The shiur’s thoroughness, meticulousness and depth have profoundly impacted not only my learning, but my outlook on life. And to learn from Rav Rosensweig, a person whose wisdom is outdone only by his character, has been a tremendous privilege.

However, part of the shiur’s greatness is that it expands well beyond the classroom. The hours I’ve spent in the beis medrash [study hall] every day preparing, and perhaps more significantly reviewing shiur, making sure that I’ve fully grasped the concepts and opinions, is an experience like no other. Being able to devote my full attention and energy to the pursuit of something so valuable and important is empowering and invigorating. The friends I’ve made “in battle” late at night as we together tried to process and clarify everything we heard that day are so unique. I feel the friendships we’ve created and centered on Torah learning and values willlastwell beyond my years at RIETS.

What extracurricular activities were you involved with during your time on campus?

I was very involved in high school programming during the year and spent six summers as a madrich [advisor] on the NCSY Summer Kollel in Israel. I started there as a camper and eventually worked my way up to being head counselor, which is an experience that’s helped me in many aspects of life. I learned how to work on a team and as an individual. I also learned that if you’re committed to an idea or a program, you’re willing to work any job at any level because you realize how essential each part of the working whole is. No job is beneath you. There’s also something really wonderful about enabling like-minded high school students to connect with each other and create a social network of guys whose relationships are built not only on having fun, but on values they identify with, through learning. Being part of that electric environment, where people are spending their free time getting excited about learning, is great.

At RIETS, I was also the editor of the Beis Yitzchak, its annual Torah journal, and I helped with programming for the Shavuos Yarchei Kallah. That program was really incredible because it was started and fully executed by another RIETS student, Rabbi Shay Schachter, and more than 850 people attended—it wasn’t a small endeavor. The fact that students here can take their idealism and execute a program like that, which has gotten really positive feedback, is unbelievable. 

Yeshiva University hosted its first annual Dead Sea Scrolls Seminar at the Wilf Campus on Sunday, May 19, showcasing the work of four Dead Sea Scrolls scholars from YU and beyond.

Dr. Moshe Bernstein offers opening remarks at YU’s inaugural Dead Sea Scrolls Conference.

“The Dead Sea Scrolls is one of those things that people hear about and talk about, and it’s important that people’s talking about it should be based on real knowledge, rather than rumors and misconceptions,” said Dr. Moshe Bernstein, David A. and Fannie M. Denenberg Chair in Biblical Studies, who organized the seminar along with Dr. Lawrence Schiffman, vice provost for undergraduate education and professor of Judaic studies at YU.

Comprised of 972 documents found in the Qumran area from 1947 through 1956, the Dead Sea Scrolls include over 200 non-biblical texts that shed light on Jewish beliefs and practices during the Second Temple period.

Schiffman’s lecture, “Sacrifice in the Dead Sea Scrolls,” posited that the “Temple Scroll” (ca. 120 B.C.E.) was an unspoken, innovative, sectarian polemic—likely Sadducee—against the Pharisaic Temple ritual of the day. Among other things, Pharisaic practice was considered insufficiently strict regarding ritual purity. As long as religious standards were not up to par, “sectarians prohibited Temple sacrifices and saw themselves as a replacement,” said Schiffman. “There was no sacrifice at Qumran; prayer replaced it.”

Thus, the sectarians ultimately “helped pioneer a method of worship that took over after the cessation of Temple sacrifice,” said Schiffman.

Dr. Hidary, Dr. Fraade, Dr. Schiffman, Dr. Bernstein, Mr. Zachter and Dr. Frisch.

In his presentation, Dr. Steven Fraade, Yale University’s Mark Taper Professor of the History of Judaism, compared Deuteronomy’s concept of juridical authority to that in the Temple Scroll and Sifre Devarim. “The surprisingly autonomous and authoritative court of Deuteronomy elicited different responses in the Temple Scroll and Sifre Devarim,” said Fraade. While the Temple Scroll “curtailed power,” the latter “transformed the high court into something even more audaciously autonomous… even though they originate from and are nourished from the same exegetical text.”

Dr. Alexandria Frisch, Ursinus College’s visiting assistant professor in Jewish studies, and Dr. Richard Hidary, assistant professor of Jewish studies at YU, also presented.

Frisch’s paper, “Heaven and Earth, Past and Future: Empire in the War Scroll,” studied the War Scroll’s perception of empire and its collapsing of Greece, Rome and other powers into one destructive, monolithic entity that would ultimately experience grand defeat.

Hidary’s paper, “Playing Musical Instruments on the Sabbath: Qumranic Prohibition or Rabbinic Safeguard?”, emphasized rabbinic literature as an invaluable resource for reconstructing the world of the Dead Sea Scrolls, but advised methodological caution to prevent imposing one’s understanding of rabbinic literature onto Qumranic texts and vice versa.

Dr. Steven Fraade

“The speakers were simultaneously able to engage in topics that were diverse and deep while making them accessible to a general audience,” said Matthew Goldstone, a doctoral candidate in Talmudic studies at New York University.

The event was made possible by a generous grant from YU alumni Debra and Jay Zachter. “I think it’s exciting for YU to be at the center of this discussion,” said Mr. Zachter, who has always been interested in the Dead Sea Scrolls and archaeology. “Of all places, it should be happening at YU.”

A common spirit runs throughout Yeshiva University: the mandate to matter.

Students of all ages and backgrounds come here to pursue a range of professional and personal dreams, from scientific research and medicine to law, Jewish education or public policy. Our students seek to harness their unique talents and YU education to make a lasting impact on the world around them. This spring, when they graduate from YU, these new alumni will hit the ground running.

In the weeks leading up to Commencement, YU News will feature one remarkable graduate from each school, reflecting, in their own words, on their time here, their passions and their dreams for the future.

Meet the Class of 2013.

Revel’s Shira Weiss left a career in finance to pursue Jewish studies.

Name: Shira Weiss

School: Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies

Hometown: Southfield, Michigan

Passion: Jewish philosophy

At Revel, you earned both a master’s and doctoral degree. What fascinates you about Judaic studies?

An Orthodox upbringing and education had given me a firm religious foundation, but I sought to explore and substantiate my convictions and observance through the study of philosophy. Medieval Jewish philosophers discussed many important theological and philosophical concepts that are still debated today. I feel that my self-understanding as a Jew has been enhanced through my studies and my beliefs and practice have become far more meaningful.

Why Revel?

I valued the opportunity to learn from serious academics that shared my religious commitments, served as mentors and influenced my intellectual development. I’ve gained a lot from informal conversations that I had with my professors as I developed my theological perspective. The candor and sophistication with which they discussed ideas with me impacted me greatly. Dr. David Shatz, Dr. Arthur Hyman and Dr. Zev Harvey, a Hebrew University professor who taught a summer course at Revel and later became an adviser for my dissertation, are all paradigmatic religious scholars that I emulate.

What does your doctoral work focus on?

I studied the philosophical interpretation of free choice in the exegetical part of Joseph Albo’s work Sefer ha-Iqqarim, or The Book of Principles. There’s a general scholarly consensus that even though Albo was influential and popular, he wasn’t very innovative as a philosopher, and there’s been a recent trend in Jewish philosophy which argues that there may have been more philosophical depth to his work than he’s given credit for.

I furthered that argument by exploring Albo’s notion of free choice, which is a theme that he repeatedly discusses in his interpretation of challenging biblical narratives. In a number of these instances, Albo interprets such narratives that have been traditionally understood as denying free choice as affirming free choice instead, perhaps in an effort to encourage his generation to assert their own free will and maintain their religious identities despite the persecutions of late 15th-century Spain, which would eventually lead to the expulsion of the Jews.

While earning your degrees at Revel, you also taught courses in Jewish Philosophy and Bible at YU’s Stern College for Women and served as assistant principal at the Frisch School as well. What do you like about teaching?

It’s a funny story, because this was not what I expected to do back in college. I graduated from Stern with a degree in economics, worked at a hedge fund and planned to go into finance. I thought I’d eventually move into venture capital. I loved Judaic studies and had actually transferred to Stern from University of Pennsylvania for them, but not as a career move—just so I could study Jewish topics for my own enrichment.

After my time at the hedge fund, the enormous time and travel commitments of the investment banking and consulting world didn’t appeal to me, so I thought I would explore opportunities in hinukh [education] to see if I found that fulfilling. And I have. I began teaching at Frisch and a few years later I was teaching at Stern as well.

At Stern, a sampling of the courses I’ve taught includes Philosophical Issues of Tanakh, where we take challenging biblical narratives and interpret them philosophically; more modern topics like the Philosophy of the Rav, where we discuss many of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s works, their influences, both Christian and Jewish, and their impact on our own understanding of religion in contemporary times; and a class called Dogma, where we investigate whether there are obligatory beliefs in Judaism and the delineation of such beliefs throughout Jewish history. In my classes, we analyze the great ideas of philosophy. Topics include free choice, divine command morality, reason and Revelation, and theodicy.

I like to explore my students’ questions and help them think about their religious experience in much greater depth. I often begin my classes with very general and relevant philosophical questions to elicit initial feedback. For example—if God is all-knowing, how can man have free choice? Does God dictate morality, or is there an independent standard of ethics? How can a good God allow evil? Are Jews obligated only in halakhic practice or in beliefs as well? We then analyze primary sources from medieval Jewish philosophers and secondary sources from contemporary scholars which help students develop a more sophisticated understanding and, hopefully, more meaningful convictions.

What’s next?

I presented a paper at the Annual Conference of the Association for Judaic Studies in December based on one of the chapters of my dissertation and a university press in attendance expressed an interest in my work. I’ve since submitted my manuscript for publication. This summer, I’ll be participating in an academic workshop for recent PhDs and a conference on the philosophy of Scripture at the Shalem Center’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem.

Meet more 2013 graduates. 

Why are literally hundreds of thousands of people streaming to exhibits of the Dead Sea Scrolls all over the United States and the rest of the world? Why should anyone even care about these remnants of close to 900 scrolls from the second and first centuries BCE and the first century CE? What possesses some of us in academia to devote our professional careers to teaching and research about the Scrolls?

Yeshiva University presents its first annual Dead Sea Scrolls conference on May 19.

The discovery of the first scrolls by Bedouin in 1947 in Cave 1 at Qumran, on the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, set off a wave of excitement. But this initial interest was misused by scholars who were intent on understanding the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Second Temple period Jewish sect that gathered them as a precursor of Christianity. To make matters even worse, the long delays in publication that ensued understandably fostered conspiracy theories worthy of Dan Brown and the Da Vinci Code, and served as a great distraction from the Scrolls’ real significance and message. After all, they are Second Temple period texts authored, copied and left for us by Jews who lived and breathed devotion to God’s Torah and its commandments, even if they represented an approach that, from the point of view of the sweep of Jewish history, was sectarian.

To be sure, the Scrolls preserve the earliest known manuscripts of the Tanakh, the Jewish Bible, termed the Old Testament by Christians. They also include an entire library of non-biblical texts, most previously unknown. They are a valuable source for understanding the varied approaches to Judaism in the Second Temple period and for reconstructing the development of Rabbinic Judaism and the background of the rise of Christianity. This is why the Dead Sea Scrolls are considered the greatest archaeological discovery in history.

After the 1948 War of Independence that followed the establishment of the State of Israel, Qumran was under Jordanian Rule. Although the nascent State of Israel was able to acquire the seven original scrolls discovered by the famous Bedouin shepherd boy Muhammed ed-Dib in 1947, the conquest of the West Bank by Jordan meant that all the rest of the scrolls ended up in Jordanian East Jerusalem, where a judenrein (“Jew free”) Christian publication team failed to publish the vast majority of the material entrusted to them. Only with the conquest of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967 did the rest of the scrolls fall into Israel’s hands. But the world had to wait over 20 years for the effects of this transfer.

The 1967 Six Day War brought about a new interest in the unpublished scrolls. Two factors led to this. First, Israel now controlled them. But the Israeli authorities allowed the all-Christian publication team to continue their failed operation because the Israelis believed the false assurances that the scrolls would soon be published. Second, and more importantly, Israeli archeologist Yigael Yadin, with the help of military intelligence, recovered the Temple Scroll during the war from a Bethlehem antiquities dealer. This scroll dealt almost entirely with Jewish ritual and law. Yadin’s pre-publication lectures, and his edition of the text (1977), re-Judaized the scrolls and reawakened Jewish interest in this important material. This attention, along with the public campaign for the release of the scrolls undertaken by Hershel Shanks, editor of the Biblical Archaeology Review, led to opening the scrolls to all scholars by 1990, as well as to the reorganization of the publication team under the leadership of Emanuel Tov of the Hebrew University. The completion of the publication process now made possible the development of a burgeoning academic field in which so many of us, including six faculty and many students here at Yeshiva University, participate today. The scrolls were in a sense rediscovered as they became fully available and as the focus of their study shifted to their proper context in the history of ancient Judaism.

Here is the great irony: You would have thought that the Christianization of the scrolls would sell. After all, there are more Christians than Jews! But we live a very different world than that of the immediate post-Holocaust era when the scrolls were first discovered. The Holocaust triggered, initially in the Catholic Church and then in other Christian churches, a self-searching and a reconceptualization of Christianity’s Jewish origins. While this was going on, Jews were readjusting to being a people in its own land, for whom the historical remnants of ancient times became a source of pride and commitment. So for both Jews and Christians, the rediscovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the 1980s and ’90s and their full publication has unleashed massive interest in the scrolls at the start of the third millennium.

Perhaps the biggest miracle here is that the renewed interest is in the real scrolls—the intensely Jewish scrolls—which are now understood as what they truly are: evidence for the history of Judaism and a major part of the collective western religious heritage.

Lawrence H. Schiffman serves as vice provost for undergraduate education and professor of Judaic studies at Yeshiva University, which presents its First Annual Dead Sea Scrolls Conference on Sunday, May 19. The opinions expressed above are solely those of the author and should not be attributed to Yeshiva University.

A common spirit runs throughout Yeshiva University: the mandate to matter.

Students of all ages and backgrounds come here to pursue a range of professional and personal dreams, from scientific research and medicine to law, Jewish education or public policy. Our students seek to harness their unique talents and YU education to make a lasting impact on the world around them. This spring, when they graduate from YU, these new alumni will hit the ground running.

In the weeks leading up to Commencement, YU News will feature one remarkable graduate from each school, reflecting, in their own words, on their time here, their passions and their dreams for the future.

Meet the Class of 2013.

Ferkauf’s Nuttha Udhayanang hopes to assist those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder in her native Thailand.

Name: Nuttha Udhayanang

School: Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology

Hometown: Bangkok, Thailand

Research Focus: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

You started your university studies as an economics major back in Thailand. How did you end up pursuing graduate psychology in the United States?

Economics is a popular major in Thailand. I had already done a year of university when I decided I wanted to explore the world outside Thailand. Initially, when I came to the U.S., I continued working toward a degree in economics, but there were other foundational courses I was required to take, including Psychology 101. It seemed like an interesting field. I began thinking about other options and decided to pursue forensic science, since that’s an area few people study in Thailand. I went home to do an internship in criminology that summer.

That was 2004, the year the big tsunami hit. Suddenly help was needed identifying bodies, and I had this background. I found myself part of a relief effort working to identify bodies and inform survivors whether their family members were dead or alive. I could see that these survivors had psychological and emotional needs that were simply not being met because there was not enough personnel, especially not enough trained personnel, to provide that kind of service for them. The environment was chaotic, even 12 months later. These people needed some kind of counseling and there was just no one to do it.

This is partly because using mental health services is not popular in Thailand. There’s still some stigma associated with the field. If you say you’re going to a counselor, psychologist or psychiatrist, people instantly think you’re really crazy. So it becomes difficult for mental health professionals to reach out and educate people about even the basics of managing their own mental health and stress.

When I returned to the U.S., I decided I would at least minor in psychology. Then I attended a poster presentation in psychology at my college (West Virginia University) and was immediately drawn to a poster about PTSD and environmental disasters. I didn’t even know what PTSD was yet, but after talking to the presenter, Dr. Joseph Scotti, I was hooked. I began working in his lab with veterans who suffer from PTSD and never looked back. When I decided to pursue graduate study so I could return to Thailand as an experienced mental health professional, he recommended Ferkauf.

What are the most valuable lessons you learned at Ferkauf?

My professors expanded my world and my mind. I learned that to be a good psychologist, you have to be open-minded about any kind of new knowledge that’s out there, because the world moves so fast these days. The program expanded my knowledge of behavior, neuroscience, psychoanalysis and cognition. There are a lot of really good methodologies you can use to determine which works best with your client—not just one theory is going to work for everyone.

Also, you have to be incredibly patient and in control of your emotions when you work with a patient. The relationship is not so much like a teacher and student as like the trust between friends. Sometimes the client won’t open up to you right away. You can’t force it.

Ferkauf offered much more than in-the-classroom knowledge. I gained life experience and I built connections with other mental health professionals, which is extremely important.

What are your research interests?

PTSD is my area of specialty. We collect and analyze a lot of data about soldiers who have PTSD, whether it’s from the war in Afghanistan or Vietnam, for the National Guard and the State of West Virginia.

But soldiers aren’t the only people we study. Recently, we did research to determine whether people who weren’t in New York City could have gotten PTSD from watching or hearing news coverage about 9/11 through the TV, radio or newspapers. We found out that it was possible, especially for women. We hope to repeat that study in Boston now.

Now that I’ve completed my master’s degree, I hope to pursue a doctorate in psychology in America and then return to Thailand as a knowledgeable, experienced and confident psychologist. I want to become a professor and use my expertise in treating veterans who suffer from PTSD in a clinical setting with soldiers from Thailand, where we have been experiencing terrorist attacks for decades. I hope to contribute something to those veterans and others in my home country who need the kind of assistance my field can provide.

Meet more 2013 graduates. 

On May 10, Yeshiva University’s Ferkauf Graduate School for Psychology and Center for Public Health Sciences hosted their 10th annual Behavioral and Social Sciences Student Research Conference Program. Known as YU Research Day, the interdisciplinary event highlights the work of students at Stern College for Women, Yeshiva College and the Sy Syms School of Business alongside presentations from students at YU’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Wurzweiler School of Social Work and Ferkauf.

“I am constantly reminded that people go into the field of psychology because they want to build civilization, they want to explore ideas and they’re wise enough to know that they don’t want to live in an enclosed bubble,” said YU President Richard M. Joel in his opening remarks to students. “They want to break down silos, bring their disciplines to play with other disciplines and inspire young people to explore their dreams and make those dreams come true.”

The program featured a keynote address by Dr. Norman Anderson, chief executive officer and executive vice president of the American Psychological Association, titled “Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities in the United States and South Africa: A Multilevel Perspective.” Anderson has had a wide-ranging career as a leader in the field of health and behavior, first as a scientist and tenured professor, and later as an executive in both governmental and nonprofit sectors. He has also provided extensive volunteer service to a number of foundations, government agencies, universities and nonprofit organizations.

In tribute to the interdisciplinary nature of the conference, Anderson’s talk focused on the wide range of factors that interact to create health disparities. “There are economic factors driving biology in ways we didn’t realize even 10 years ago,” he said. “We need more psychologists looking at these dynamic interactions.”

Following the address, conference participants attended a poster session showcasing the work of more than 90 graduate and undergraduate students in collaboration with faculty mentors. Topics ranged from cognitive and behavioral coping strategies in weight loss intervention programs to the role of psychotherapy in treating patients with multiple sclerosis to the cognitive traits of terrorists.

“It is amazing how each year we are able to bring together the broad spectrum of social science research under one roof and to acknowledge the diversity of research activity that is taking place throughout the University at all of our schools,” said Ferkauf Assistant Dean Michael Gill.

“My mentor, Dr. Carl Auerbach, has helped me shape my ideas for this project as well as my goals for the future as a researcher and clinician aspiring to work in the field of trauma and global health,” said Navya Singh, whose doctoral research at Ferkauf examines the way Rwandan genocide survivors who immigrated to the United States are impacted by both the massacre and moving to a new country.

“The research attempts to provide survivors with a voice to tell their stories,” said Singh. “In the future, I hope our study helps guide policy decisions, help clinicians in the field, and also facilitates future research about survivors of mass violence and the potential negative as well as positive effects of migration.”

Singh will accompany Auerbach on his annual trip to Rwanda to learn more about his work there and develop her own experience in the field.

Sarah Rendell’s presentation highlighted a few surprising findings from her four years of study in associate professor Dr. Charles Swencionis’s Obesity Lab in the Clinical Psychology Health Emphasis Program at Ferkauf. Her study examined the way restaurant patrons used calorie information in menus to make meal decisions.

“We found that participants didn’t utilize salient calorie information to make healthier choices, at least not at the time of purchase,” she said. “Given that legislation will require food service establishments to post calorie labels on their menus within the next couple of years, it’s surprising that there’s not more research supporting this method as an effective means of helping Americans maintain healthier eating habits.” Rendell believes further explanation, like adding a frame of reference to menus about the suggested calorie intake for the average person, might have more of an impact.

Gen Nakao worked closely with Dr. Sonia Suchday, director of the Clinical Psychology Health Emphasis Program, to develop his research on the cognitive processes behind the terrorist mindset. “Dr. Suchday always cautions us not to jump to conclusions,” he said. “In her lab, we’re trained to have a conceptual framework and suspend our own assumptions when dealing with any research topic.” By studying how terrorists come to possess radical beliefs or extreme worldviews, Nakao hopes to ultimately develop a hypothesis about what instigates the transformation of otherwise normal people into terrorists.

“If we deconstruct these kinds of extreme mindsets, I believe we can prevent terrorism,” he said.

For the second consecutive year, Yeshiva University has captured the Skyline Conference’s Sportsmanship Trophy for displaying outstanding team sportsmanship during the 2012-13 academic year. The Skyline Conference instituted the Sportsmanship Trophy in 2007-08 to gauge team sportsmanship among its member schools.

YU has been awarded the conference sportsmanship trophy for the second straight year, its fourth overall.

“At Yeshiva we believe that proper sportsmanship is a cornerstone of competition,” said Joe Bednarsh, YU director of athletics, physical education and recreation. ”It’s important to our student-athletes that they be seen as fiercely competitive, determined and tough, all while keeping to a high standard of fair play. It says volumes that our teams can be successful and also be recognized as good sportsmen.”

Yeshiva compiled 567 points out of a possible 780 points for an overall rating of .726. A Team Sportsmanship Award is presented in each of the conference’s 17 sports. The Maccabees earned Team Sportsmanship Awards in six of the 10 sports in which they participated: baseball, women’s tennis, men’s cross country, women’s volleyball, men’s soccer and men’s volleyball.

A school earns points toward the Sportsmanship Trophy based upon a 10-point scale in each sport. Opposing coaches rate each team on a scale of 1 to 10 with a ’1′ being considered poor sportsmanship and a ’10′ being considered outstanding sportsmanship. A school’s scores in each sport are then added together and divided by the total number of points that could possibly be earned.

Yeshiva also won the award in 2007-08 and 2008-09.

Keep up with all the latest Yeshiva University Athletics news, schedules and scores at www.yumacs.com.

The American Cancer Society, the largest non-government, not-for-profit funding source of cancer research in the United States, has awarded Dr. Marina Holz, assistant professor of biology at Yeshiva University’s Stern College for Women, a $720,000 Research Scholar Grant. The four-year grant will be used to continue her work researching how the mTOR pathway affects the growth of estrogen-receptor positive breast cancer.

Dr. Marina Holz has been awarded a $720,000 Research Scholar Grant.

Holz is studying how the growth factor and estrogen receptor (ER) signaling pathways co-regulate each other. Clinically, up to 60 percent of breast cancers are ER-positive and display a dependence on estrogen for cancer cell growth. ER-positive cancers can be targeted therapeutically by endocrine therapy, but resistance often develops. The goal of Holz’s research is to identify how the mTOR pathway, a central integrator of growth signals in the cells, regulates the growth of ER-positive cells and whether targeting mTOR could hinder the proliferation of cancer cells. She also seeks to create effective combination therapeutic strategies.

Holz has taught at YU since 2007 and holds joint appointments in the Department of Molecular Pharmacology at YU’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Einstein Cancer Center. She earned her Ph.D. from HarvardUniversity before moving to Yeshiva to start her own lab. She has been very productive, publishing steadily as a senior author and receiving several federal and foundation grants.

The American Cancer Society’s research program is designed to identify and fund the most innovative cancer research and the best scientists and health care professionals through high quality, independent peer review.

In my role as genetic counselor, I meet with men, women and families who have personal or family histories of cancer. I take a detailed medical and family history, assess the chance for an hereditary risk for cancer, and recommend appropriate genetic testing. Genetic testing can help identify what that “hereditary factor” is. When the results come back, I interpret them in the context of the family history and help make screening and management recommendations.

Chani Wiesman Berliant is a genetic counselor at YU’s Program for Jewish Genetic Health

Inevitably, the following statement would come up in discussion:

“…and if you carry one of these BRCA mutations, it means that there’s a 50/50 chance that you could have passed it on to your kids…”

That’s the worst part, by far, of my genetic counseling sessions with women who have personal histories of breast or ovarian cancer.

By the time they meet with me, they’ve already started working through some of the issues of accepting a cancer diagnosis and are taking steps towards treatment and, hopefully, recovery. I’m the one who reminds them that this isn’t just about them. I explain that their cancer diagnosis might have resulted from something hereditary that put them at an increased risk for cancer, something that they also could have passed down without intending to. I remind them that it’s not just about their cancer diagnosis; it’s about their daughters’ and granddaughters’ cancer risks in the present and future. I see their faces drop as they start to think about the legacy they may have passed down, one that they wish had stopped with them.

Hereditary cancer risk exists in all populations, but certain types of hereditary cancer risk are more common in the Ashkenazi Jewish population, and this is, unfortunately, a legacy which we need to acknowledge.

Breast cancer is alarmingly common, affecting one in eight women in the United States. Ovarian cancer is less common: it “only” affects one in 70 American women. A diagnosis of breast cancer or ovarian cancer in a family does not automatically point to a hereditary etiology, in fact, most cancers are not hereditary. However, when there are multiple cancer diagnoses in a family, at young ages and with Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry, there is a drastically increased suspicion of BRCA1/ BRCA2—associated Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer.

The role of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes in the body is in part to protect us from cancer. However, when there is a mutation or an error in one of these genes, that protection from cancer is diminished. Without the necessary protection, these individuals have much higher cancer risks, up to an 87 percent lifetime risk to develop breast cancer, and up to a 44 percent lifetime risk to develop ovarian cancer.

We are more likely to see BRCA-related cancers develop at younger women, in their 30s and 40s. But the BRCA mutations don’t impact only women—men with BRCA mutations have an increased risk for cancer as well.

As an educator, I speak with communities about family histories and cancer risk. I see women realizing for the first time that they and their families may be at an increased risk for cancer. You see, BRCA mutations are more common in the Ashkenazi community in general. One in 40 individuals of Ashkenazi descent carries a BRCA mutation, regardless of their personal or family history. Once there is a personal or family history of cancer, the chance of carrying a BRCA mutation goes up.

Why would genetic testing and the knowledge of hereditary cancer risk be helpful? In my mind, the clear and obvious answer is: if you know that you are at a high risk for cancer, you can do something about it. More intensive breast and ovarian cancer screening regimens are recommended for women who have BRCA mutations.

These women may also decide to pursue preventive surgical options.

The goal of screening regimens is to catch cancer at an early and treatable stage, whereas preventive surgeries are aimed at reducing the cancer risks. There are even ways to prevent BRCA mutations from being passed on to future generations.

These screening, surgical and reproductive options involve highly personal decisions—but they can be lifesaving decisions. Perhaps that’s the legacy we want to pass on, not one of acceptance of our “genetic fate,” but one of being proactive and taking control of the course of our fate.

This Mother’s Day, speak with your mother, and the other mothers in your life, about the legacy that you want to pass on to your children.

Chani Wiesman Berliant, MS, CGC is a genetic counselor with the Program for Jewish Genetic Health of Yeshiva University/Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Division of Reproductive Genetics at Montefiore Medical Center. To learn more about hereditary breast and ovarian cancer and other Jewish genetic health issues, visit the Program for Jewish Genetic Health’s new GeneSights Jewish Genetics Online Series at www.genesights.com. The opinions expressed above are solely those of the author and should not be attributed to Yeshiva University. Read the op-ed in The Jewish Press.