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Thursday September 27, 2007

Shorts: Bay Area

Palo Alto campus set to break ground

The Taube-Koret Campus for Jewish Life will take a major step toward becoming a reality on Sunday, Oct. 7 with its official groundbreaking ceremony.

The 4 p.m. ceremony will take place at the intersection of Palo Alto’s East Charleston Road and Fabian Way, the future home of the Oshman Family Jewish Community Center, the 899 Charleston senior living community and other Jewish organizations.

For more information contact Mimi Sells at (650) 852-3557 or Sherie Koshover at (415) 469-2249.   

Koret gives $1 million for Israel redevelopment

The Bay Area-based Koret Foundation has announced a $1 million grant to the Milken Institute to develop an infrastructure bond that can aid in the reconstruction of Northern Israel.

The grant money was awarded to the Los Angeles-based Milken Institute’s Israel Center, which works to accelerate capital market development, financial innovation and job creation with the goal of ensuring Israel’s economic independence.

Half the grant will be used to establish a bond authority; the remaining funds will be the first deposit into a credit enhancement pool for the bond.

Jewish Cal prof awarded ‘Genius Grant’

Claire Kremen, a professor of conservation biology at U.C. Berkeley, was this week named one of 25 nationwide “genius” award recipients by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Kremen, who is Jewish, grew up in Raleigh, N.C., the daughter of an Orthodox Jewish psychology professor. She has been teaching at Berkeley since 2005 after a previous position at Princeton.

The professor’s major work involves the study of bees and other natural pollinators as well as a conservation planning initiative in Masoala National Park in Madagascar.

Kremen told j. she was “honored and humbled” by the award and its $500,000 prize, and “I have some ideas” about what to do with the money.

New Bible series to air on Web, TV

“Journey to Zion,” a weekly 13-part Bible teaching series produced by International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, is set begin its national broadcast and Webcast. Hosted by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, the program premieres Sunday, Sept. 30.

Each 30-minute segment series features Eckstein before a studio audience and includes on-location visuals of Israel, traditional Jewish music, and audience questions on historical and current events.

The program can be accessed online at www.JourneyToZion.org, and will air on the INSP, World Harvest Television and TLN/Sky Angel networks, plus 16 markets around the country including San Francisco. For more information, visit www.ifcj.org.

New resource for Jewish education

A new Web site designed to aid Jewish educators, Hebrew schoolteachers and parents is now online. The creation of Menlo Park Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld, www.jewishspirituality.net features ready-to-go lesson plans, curricular support, audio and video clips, and materials written by Seinfeld based on his 2005 book “The Art of Amazement.”

Registration is required, but jewishspirituality.net is free to users. The site is produced by Seinfeld’s nonprofit Baltimore-based organization, Jewish Spiritual Literacy.

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