Catalyzing Emerging Leaders Through 10 Visionary Years of the Weitzman-JDC Fellowship

There are nearly 50 Weitzman alumni and current Fellows — part of 150 people connected to HUC who’ve traveled with Entwine and 300 who’ve had some sort of touchpoint with JDC over the last decade since the start of the partnership.

Through the Fellowship, students learn about JDC’s work, visit programs in the field, and establish a network of peers. Since individuals serve as Fellows during their first three years at HUC, graduates are beginning to be placed in and deepen their leadership at congregations across the country and around the world.

Rabbi Joshua Mikutis, the Fellowship’s rabbinic director and Entwine’s director of design and Jewish learning, said the power of the program lies in the way it’s structured — as a time-release return on investment that will only get more powerful as the years go on.

“Our hope is that these experiences will be transformative for a group of people who’ve already made the decision to dedicate their lives to serving the Jewish people,” he said. “Now it will be with a different angle, with that larger perspective of global Jewish responsibility echoing through all the work they do.”

For Will Brockman, experiences traveling with Entwine to Cape Town for an immersive week with the South African Jewish community and to Wrocław, Poland, to conduct a Passover Seder have deepened his understanding of the role he can play as a Jewish leader.

Jane Weitzman’s unique vision, was to imagine bringing a core tenet of Jewish identity to scale — what Brockman, a current Fellow and cantorial student, described as being “a people who take care of each other.”

“Now, through my experiences with JDC, it’s not just something I intellectually know but something I feel and carry with me and will, through my own cantorate one day, craft for my congregants, students, and fellow clergy,” he said.

Importantly, the broader HUC relationship — coupled with Entwine’s expertise in young adult immersive Jewish experiences — means that even a relatively contained touchpoint with JDC can have major implications for participants.

That was true for Rabbi Sarah Berman, who serves as the director of Jewish culture and programming at Central Synagogue in New York City. Though she traveled to Georgia and Azerbaijan for only a week in 2018, the trip continues to echo in her work today — through programs she runs, sermons she gives, and more.

“I was able to travel with my peers and interact with the world in a new way. We think of that as such a crucial part of Israel education, but as a North American Jewish community, we haven’t focused on the diaspora in the same way,” she said.