Want to join a team dedicated to creative exploration and generating new projects and applications for the Jewish community? Then apply to the PresenTense Institute for Creative Zionism (PICZ), a summer institute running from June 18th until July 31 in Jerusalem. (Deadline for applications is this Friday, April 20th, so finish your taxes and apply at the website, creativezionism.com.)
Dedicated to transforming the way the Jewish people think, program and work, PICZ has been inspired by the vision of Zionist thinkers across the ideological spectrum such as Ahad Ha’am, AD Gordon and Ze’ev Jabotinsky, who foresaw Israel as the laboratory for the renewal of the Jewish People, and the reinvigoration of Hebrew culture.
Institute fellows will be innovators on the cutting edge of Jewish creativity: programmers and designers, informal educators and school vice principals, nonprofit managers and biotech visionaries—anyone with a vision and a portfolio of innovation. It is the hope of the founders that the PICZ will create a network of Zionist thinkers and doers: call it Chalutz 2.0.
More information is available on the website for the PICZ. Apply now!
Rabbi Yonah
4/16/2007
Hey, I have a a crazy idea! You guys could study Torah in Jerusalem! Torah is revolutionary, transformative, and study of the Torah will alter the way you think about others, about Jews, about Israel.
Having been raised on a diet of such “luminaries” at zionist summer camp for years, all I can say is that I would take the Chofetz Chaim over any of those dudes in a second.
Rebbi Nachman blows away Ahad Ha’am, even though they both are from Ukraine.
l would suggest Rav Kook so you can have cutting edge Zionism that is vibrantly relative and studied by tens of thousands of Jews in Israel on a daily basis.
I think that its great to bring young people together to be on the cutting edges of Jewish creativity, and I wish you all a successful summer!
Leah
4/16/2007
Esther, oh how I wish I had more than 8 days of vacation in the bank…. meh.
Great programs, keep ‘em coming.
Ariel Beery
4/16/2007
Rabbi Yonah, I’d take Ahad Ha’am and Simon Rawidowizc over the Chofetz Chaim any day.
Nahman might have inspired a movement, but, with all due respect, for all of his follower’s fervor he did not a country make.
As for Rav Kook–I’d love the man much more if his seed weren’t so Kookie.
And that’s the best thing about PICZ–that there are people there that agree with you, adn some there that will agree with me.
Rabbi Yonah
4/17/2007
The Chofetz Chaim is studied daily by maybe tens of thousands of Jews around the world daily – Ahad Ha’am?
Nachman’s love of Israel, his trip to Palestine, influenced his chassidim, and many chassidim in general, and most likley had an influence on Ukrainian Jewry well into the turn of the century.
And of all the men you mentioned, not one made a country.
Kook’s seed is kooky? hahah! Herzl’s kids were totally messed up, and his wife killed herself. Not to diminish the man and what he did, only to argue, that once you begin judging Zionist thinkers by their offspring, the secular Zionists don’t fare to well.
It’s not about agreement — I just offer that as a friend, an admirer of you and your work, and as the “senior zionist activist” that I am. You can take it or leave it. I would encourage you and PICZ to be more open minded and diverse, and study all kinds of Zionism. Even Mizrachi and Evangelical Zionism!