May 2009 Issue
A series of short videos from Rabbi Sid on contemporary issues
J-Serve 2009 Continues to Expand
 On Sunday, April 26, 2009, more than 10,000 Jewish teens participated in over 80 different service projects to better their communities. In Miami, FL, teens painted and restored the Miami Beach boardwalk and helped with a beach cleanup. Teens in Detroit, MI, renovated, cleaned and painted the Downtown Synagogue, the last synagogue in Detroit. In Seattle, WA, teens spent the day volunteering at different Jewish social service agencies across the city.
Now in its fifth year, J‑Serve continues to introduce teens from across the Jewish spectrum to a life of service. J‑Serve takes place in conjunction with Global Youth Service Day, which reaches millions of teens annually in a three-day service event. This year, J‑Serve awarded more than $75,000 in grants to 44 different communities to support their projecst and yearlong teen leadership and community service activities. In January, 78 project leaders attended a three day J‑Serve training conference in San Diego, CA to learn about best practices in project planning.
Thanks to the generosity of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, eight cities received funding to participate in the newly created J-Serve Leadership Corps. These cities (San Diego, CA; Los Angeles, CA; Seattle, WA; Pittsburgh, PA; Austin, TX; Hartford, CT; Baltimore, MD; and Atlanta, GA) each received $2,500 in funding in addition to their mini-grant. The funding was used to create a core group of teens who planned and prepared for J‑Serve, attended the training conference in San Diego, and met a minimum of four times throughout the year to do a combination of community service, planning and Jewish learning. Through the Leadership Corps teens get to take on more leadership opportunities while regularly integrating service into their lives.
Mark your calendars: J‑Serve 2010 will take place on April 25, 2010!
PanimWorks Poised to Take DC and the Southwest by Storm
 PANIM staff is gearing up for two great PanimWorks programs this summer. PanimWorks: DC JAM (Judaism, Activism, and Mitzvah work) is in its 7th summer and has been restructured to offer both two- and four-week options. JAM takes place on the campus of The George Washington University in Washington, DC, and is a leadership training program for teens passionate about politics, service, activism, and Judaism. With more than fifty accepted applicants, JAM is almost full and will include participants from America, Canada, and the Dominican Republic.
PanimWorks: Southwest, now in its third summer, is a two-week cultural exchange and community service program on a Native American Reservation in the American Southwest. We have already accepted over thirty-five teens and more applications are coming in each day. Two of our participants are so enthusiastic about PANIM that they are kicking off the summer with JAM and then flying to Colorado to participate in the second session of PanimWorks: Southwest.
Talented educators will be staffing both of our programs. Adam Greenwald, one of JAM’s group leaders, is a third-year rabbinical student at the Ziegler School for Rabbinic Studies and has staffed both DC JAM (in 2007) and Southwest (in 2008). Josh Ladon, the other JAM group leader, holds a master’s in Jewish Thought from Tel Aviv University and a certificate in Jewish Education from the Shalom Hartman Institute. Southwest group leader Anna Levy is a former PANIM fellow returning for her third summer staffing the program. Her co-leader, Megan Goldman, who spent a year studying at the Pardes Institute in Jerusalem, has two years of experience as Yale’s Jewish Campus Service Corps fellow and has staffed three birthright trips.
Rabbinical Students Gather for Inter-Denominational Learning
 PANIM’s spring Inter-Denominational Rabbinical Student Retreat at Isabella Freedman Retreat Center in Falls Village, CT, sparked much learning and discussion among the 24 attendees. Rabbi Sid Schwarz led the retreat with the support of two other faculty members, Rabbi Dov Linzer (dean of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah in New York) and Claudia Horwitz (founder of the Stone House, a spiritual/social justice retreat center in North Carolina). The retreat focused on spirituality, social justice, and the rabbinate.
This is the fourth year that PANIM has sponsored two retreats with participants representing eight seminaries spanning the spectrum from Orthodox to Jewish Renewal. Seminary deans nominate students to attend these retreats as a vital part of preparing rabbis to think creatively about the various settings where they will serve as spiritual leaders. Rabbi Sid Schwarz launched the program model as a piece of PANIM’s professional development efforts. “We have long provided training for Jewish educators and teen workers,” he said, “but the challenges facing the Jewish community also will require our rabbis to work across denominational and institutional lines to create a compelling version of Judaism for the 21st century.”
At each retreat, Rabbi Sid is joined by two co-faculty, providing the students with a rich range of viewpoints on the given topic. Recent faculty have included: Rabbis Jonah Pesner of Just Congregations, Jill Jacobs from the Jewish Funds for Justice, Laura Geller of Temple Emanuel of Beverly Hills, CA, Rabbi Asher Lopatin of Anshe Shalom of Chicago. The program is funded by the Lasko Family Foundation and the New York UJA/Federation.
PANIM’s Founder to be Honored at June 14th Benefit Dinner
 On Sunday, June 14, 2009, PANIM will honor Rabbi Sid Schwarz for his role in founding PANIM in 1988 and leading the organization since then. Earlier this year Rabbi Sid announced his intention to step down from his role as the organization’s CEO. The event promises to be an inspiring tribute and an opportunity for PANIM’s extended family to come together and celebrate the organization’s accomplishments over its 21 year history. At the event we will also acknowledge individuals whose generosity has made PANIM’s work possible. This will include leaders of PANIM’s $1 million dollar Fund for the Future campaign.
Also that evening, the 2009 Aaron Goldman Young Jewish Activist Award will be presented to Zachary Novetsky, a junior at NYU who was inspired by a Muslim-Jewish alternative spring break trip to become a campus activist for dialogue between members of the two religious groups.
The dinner is being chaired by Marlene and Stuart Schooler, Steve Shapiro and Karen Simon. It will be held at Congregation B’nai Israel in Rockville, MD. Those interested in attending or placing a tribute or ad in the program book should be in touch with Hannah Lipman.
PANIM Alum Nathan Rothstein Devoted to Re-Energizing New Orleans
 Nathan Rothstein participated in Panim el Panim in the spring of 2001 as a high school junior. Although at the time he did not feel particularly connected to the Jewish community, the curriculum showed him the strong connections in the Jewish community between faith and social justice.
Throughout college Nathan participated in and led alternative spring break programs that dealt with poverty in the United States. In the spring of 2006, he took a Hillel trip to the Gulf Coast and saw the post-Katrina devastation for the first time. This experience led him to join AmeriCorps and spend a year living and working in the poorest neighborhood in New Orleans doing relief and neighborhood planning work. After finishing his term, he worked to recruit students for a new charter school and helped the Jewish Federation start their Newcomer Incentive program to encourage Jews to move to New Orleans.
In the fall of 2007, Nathan became the executive director of the New Orleans Young Urban Rebuilding Professionals Initiative, a group that helps young professionals connect to each other across race and class lines and unites them in attracting more young people to the city. The group now has over 3,300 members; throughout 2008, they ran dozens of programs helping young professionals connect to the resources they needed to make New Orleans home and create a future in the city.
In January 2009 Nathan became the political director for James Perry, who is a progressive candidate for mayor of New Orleans. Reflecting on his time in New Orleans, Nathan says, “the pursuit of justice and acts of loving kindness and have played a major role in my personal and professional development and I am grateful to PANIM for introducing me to many of these concepts.”
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