Posted on May 4, 2022
Outstanding High School Students from Diverse Jewish Backgrounds Selected to Study Together in Israel and Join a Dynamic Community of North American and Israeli Leaders
May 2022 — The Bronfman Fellowship has selected its 36th cohort of intellectually curious 11th-graders from across North America, among them the co-founder of LingLeague, an international organization for teens interested in linguistics; a nationally ranked rower who has participated in the Head of the Charles race in Boston; the founder of BookTurn, which enables underprivileged children to build a personal library; and a writer and editorial board member of a youth-led interfaith magazine.
The 26 Fellows, who come from a broad spectrum of the Jewish community, will participate in a transformative, free Fellowship-year experience beginning with a summer in Israel, where they explore a rich, complex tapestry of Jewish texts and ideas in conversation with one another and a faculty team of leading rabbis, educators, and artists. They also interact with a group of Israeli peers who were chosen through a parallel selection process as part of the Israeli Fellowship, Amitei Bronfman. The new class of Fellows will join a vibrant, lifelong alumni community that includes some of today’s most exciting Jewish writers, thinkers and leaders.
The Bronfman Fellowship was founded in 1987 by Edgar M. Bronfman, z”l, formerly CEO of the Seagram Company Ltd. and a visionary Jewish philanthropist. Mr. Bronfman passed away in December 2013.
“Edgar Bronfman would have relished the opportunity to get to know this year’s Fellows,” said Becky Voorwinde, Executive Director of The Bronfman Fellowship. “They are a passionate, inquisitive, talented and incredibly bright bunch. I look forward to seeing them challenge and inspire one another and their communities throughout their lives.”
Adam R. Bronfman, president of The Samuel Bronfman Foundation, said he was “impressed and heartened” by the new cohort. “The energy, diversity and intellectual firepower of this group speak to my father’s belief that young people can change the world in ways that previous generations couldn’t have envisioned,” he said. “My father treasured the Fellowship as an investment in the Jewish future, and I am proud to continue his work. It brings me joy to witness the magic that happens when Jews from all backgrounds come together to access Jewish wisdom and have important conversations. I look forward to getting to know the 2022 Fellows personally, and to joining some of those conversations myself.”
Following a competitive application process, the 2022 Fellows are from 11 states and Canada, and represent a wide range of Jewish backgrounds, including Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Just Jewish and secularly/culturally Jewish.
The Fellowship promotes the study of Jewish texts, traditions, history and culture as a way for Fellows to expand their perspectives and engage with one another and the world. The Fellows will study with an esteemed faculty, including Jake Marmer, Education and Programming Director of The Bronfman Fellowship, author of three poetry collections, and contributing editor/poetry critic for Tablet Magazine; Dan Libenson, J.D., founder and president of Judaism Unbound; Rabbi Dr. Ariel Evan Mayse, assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University; Rabbanit Dr. Jennie Rosenfeld, current recipient of an Advanced Torah Fellowship from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, and Mashgicha (spiritual advisor) at Midreshet TVA; and Arielle Tonkin, an artist, spiritual director, and scholar of art and Judaics, whose works have been exhibited at institutions such as the Jewish Museum of Maryland and the Rubin Frankel Gallery in Boston, MA.
The Bronfman Fellowship alumni community includes some of today’s leading Jewish cultural creators, deep thinkers, moral voices, and community builders. There are now over 1350 Bronfman Fellowship alumni across North America and Israel. Among them are 8 Rhodes Scholars, 4 former Supreme Court clerks, 20 Fulbright Scholars, 37 Wexner Fellows and 27 Dorot Fellows. Leaders of note among Fellowship alumni include Daniel Handler, a.k.a. Lemony Snicket, author of the best-selling Series of Unfortunate Events children’s books; Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything Is Illuminated; and Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum, Rabbi and co-founder of the pluralistic Jewish community, the Kavana Cooperative, in Seattle. Others include Judy Batalion, author of The Light of Days; Anne Dreazen, Foreign Affairs Specialist in the Department of Defense; Itamar Moses, Tony award-winner for The Band’s Visit; and Deborah Sacks Mintz, Community Singing Consultant of Hadar’s Rising Song Institute. Alumni also include entrepreneurial Jewish leaders who have founded organizations like Keshet, Sefaria, and YidLife Crisis; and serve in central leadership roles at major organizations like The Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, the Jewish Women’s Archive, Central Synagogue, Hillel International and The Foundation for Jewish Camp, to name a few.
Our Israeli alumni have also ascended to positions of influence in government, civil groups, the private sector and cultural institutions. Israeli alumni include attorneys at the State Justice Department, noted journalists, successful filmmakers (including a Tribeca Film Festival winner), political advisers to Members of Knesset, members of elite IDF units and university lecturers.
About The Bronfman Fellowship
The Bronfman Fellowship, the flagship program for outstanding young Jews, taps 26 North American teenagers at a formative point in their lives, the year before college, when an intense, immersive experience will have the most impact. The Fellowship is an opportunity unlike any other: a space where young people who want to see the world through a lens broader than their own can explore issues with depth, candor, and joy, while forming friendships to last a lifetime. Fellows wrestle with major issues in contemporary Jewish life, meet some of today’s most influential figures, and expand their perspectives as they build community with those representing different backgrounds, worldviews, and approaches to Jewish life and practice. The year begins with a five-week summer study program that typically takes place in Israel and includes an encounter with a parallel cadre of outstanding Israeli teenagers. Programming continues throughout Fellows’ senior year of high school with a series of lively in-person and virtual seminars, gatherings, and projects. Upon graduating high school, the Fellows join an alumni community that has become a model for lifelong engagement, as Bronfman alumni continue to exchange ideas and inspire one another to contribute their talents, vision, and creativity to the Jewish community and the world.
The Fellowship, founded in 1987 by Edgar M. Bronfman, z”l, reflects Mr. Bronfman’s early and impassioned belief that for the Jewish people to thrive, Israeli and American Jews from a variety of backgrounds must be engaged in open and creative discourse with one another. The alumni embody Mr. Bronfman’s vision that young people who are enriched and energized by their Judaism are poised to contribute not only to Jewish life, but to improving the world.
For more information about The Bronfman Fellowship, including how to apply, please visit www.bronfman.org.
Contact Information
Stefanie Weisman
The Bronfman Fellowship
Following is a list of 2022 Bronfman Fellows. Pictures available upon request.
Arizona
Paradise Valley, AZ. Eliana (Elle) Carmel Rosenfeld attended Pardes Jewish Day school for nine years before transitioning to Phoenix Country Day School, a secular high school in Paradise Valley, Arizona. In her free time, you can find her rowing for hours in a single sculling boat on Tempe Town Lake—a sport she hopes to pursue in college and beyond. This October, she had the amazing opportunity of racing at the Head of the Charles in Boston, and is enthusiastic to have requalified to compete again next year! In November she was the AZcentral Sports Awards Academic All-Star Athlete of the Week. She is a current Rising Voices Fellow, a program of the Jewish Women’s Archive, where she is able to delve into her interests of feminism, Jewish history, and social justice by writing blog posts and engaging in conversation with academics and amazing peers across the country. This experience thus far has opened her eyes to a pluralistic lens of Judaism, as compared to her predominantly Ashkenazic, Arizona community. She also engages with her passion for writing by publishing on jGirls+ Magazine, an online publication and community that seeks to elevate and amplify the voices of young female-identifying Jews. She is a 6-year volunteer at Friendship Circle Arizona and a current 2-year teen Board member where she works planning events, fundraising, and educating mentors and the community about FCAZ’s mission to provide a safe and fun space for disabled kids and those facing severe health challenges. She is also co-president of the Jewish Club at school, enjoys going for leisurely runs while listening to audiobooks, and makes the best oatmeal ever.
California
Los Angeles, CA. Natalie Cosgrove went to Jewish day school at Sinai Akiba Academy and is now in her junior year at Harvard-Westlake School in Studio City. Natalie is an active member of her school newspaper, The Chronicle, and has been involved in journalism for her entire tenure at school. She enjoys writing articles for the News, Features, and Opinions sections on subjects such as gun violence in schools, female objectification and climate change. As part of her commitment to journalism, she mentors kids from underserved schools and teaches them important journalistic skills such as critical reading, writing and editing. Additionally, she is the Head German Editor for her school’s world language magazine entitled Babel. Natalie is also an active member of the Ethics Bowl Team, where she competes on a national level on topics such as governmental invasion of privacy, corporate influence on the environment and police defunding. In her spare time, Natalie has enjoyed playing on the Harvard-Westlake Varsity tennis team. Her favorite pastime to unwind during the week is during her Thursday night radio show, where she and her good friend co-host and play popular “dad” music from the 80’s.
Santa Barbara, CA. Isabelle Kim-Sherman is a junior at Dos Pueblos High School in Goleta and a member of Congregation B’nai B’rith. She is an award-winning writer whose work has been published in Tablet Magazine as well as two California Poets in the Schools Statewide Anthologies. She is also the president of the Dos Pueblos Film Club and the concertmaster of Santa Barbara Strings.
Connecticut
North Haven, CT. David Garsten attends Choate Rosemary Hall and is a member of Temple Beth Sholom. A conlanger and YouTuber, he co-founded LingLeague, an international organization for teens interested in linguistics—most recently hosting student events at the annual Linguistics Society of America meeting and a college fair with linguistics programs including Yale, Brown, and NYU. He’s a student member of the LSA and the Language Creation Society, and copresident of Hillel and the Linguistics Club at his school. He also loves creative writing and edits the Lit, his school’s most prominent literary magazine.
West Hartford, CT. Eliana Simmons is a junior at Hall High School in West Hartford, Connecticut. She belongs to Beth El Temple and has attended religious school there as well as at Congregation Beth Israel. Through JTConnect’s Teen Leadership and Philanthropy Initiative, she is working with a group of teens to raise money to promote gender equity and fight homelessness. Eliana studies with the Einayich Yonim Fellowship, which approaches environmental issues and leadership from a Jewish spiritual perspective. She is an engineer on her high school’s VEX robotics team. Eliana is a writer and editor of French for Gladiatores, Hall’s foreign language magazine, as well as a member of the French National Honor Society. As a member of her school’s Link Crew, she helps introduce new students to high school. Last summer, Eliana studied Jewish literature with the Yiddish Book Center’s Great Jewish Books program.
Massachusetts
Brookline, MA. Elke Bentley is a student at Maimonides School, a Modern Orthodox school in Brookline, MA, and has grown up in the Boston Jewish community. She is an avid language learner, who speaks fluent Hebrew and is working on her conversational Arabic and Spanish. In addition to the Jewish studies program at her school, she is a Daf Yomi enthusiast, and has been working through Meseket Sanhedrin over the past year with her study partner. Last summer, she participated in the Dr. Beth Samuels Drisha High School Summer Program. Elke enjoys playing klezmer, American, Israeli / Mizrachi, and traditional music on the violin, guitar, and electric bass.
Malden, MA. Kiley Fray was raised in Malden, Massachusetts, a town located just north of Boston. Through her public education in a diverse community, she was enriched by the different cultures that surrounded her and encouraged to express her Jewish identity. Fray has a passion for community engagement; this prompted her to join service-based fellowships across the greater Boston area: Hebrew College, which provided her with engaging work centered around her goals for change; The Dignity Project, which is based on connection with cross-cultural and interreligious leaders who confront issues in their area with thoughtfulness, care, and skill; and The COVID Youth Commission, which was a response to the COVID-19 crisis that helped mitigate the issues faced by people in the greater Boston area pre-pandemic, which were only exacerbated by the crisis. These fellowships provided her with mentors from different religious backgrounds. They also connected her to peers who differed in their cultural, religious, and social backgrounds, but shared a common commitment to intersectional dialogue.
Somerville, MA. Lia Sokol attended JCDS, a pluralistic Jewish private school in Watertown, through fifth grade. She then switched to public school and now attends Somerville High School. At school she is a very conscientious student and receives high grades in her classes. She attends Minyan Tehillah, which is a partnership congregation in Cambridge, and she learned to read from the Torah and lead prayer services for her Bat Mitzvah. Lia is on her school robotics team, and works as a teacher in an afterschool program and summer camps for elementary school kids. For many years she has been regularly volunteering for Transition House, a domestic violence shelter in Cambridge, and takes care of the kid residents in the play-space, gathers donations, and has advocated on their social media. She has received the Next Gen Youth Volunteer Award in 2018 from the City of Cambridge for her work. Lia also collects food, toiletries, and feminine hygiene products to give out at the Somerville Community Fridge down the street and has formed relationships with many neighbors who experience food insecurity.
New Jersey
Montclair, NJ. Abraham Kamil is a member of the synagogue Bnai Keshet, a Reconstructionist congregation located in Montclair, New Jersey. Abraham, nicknamed Abi, was born in Africa and was adopted into a family at four years old. After his adoption, he lived in Israel for 2 years in Har Halutz. He moved to the United States at 6 years old. Currently he attends Montclair High School and is a member of the National Honors Society, a group of academically gifted students who show great potential for the future. Furthermore, Abraham is part of a small learning community in his high school known as the Civics and Government Institute, where he practices positions in government as well as taking in-depth classes about U.S history. CGI involves taking part in mock trials, class debates, and various roles in government such as Congress. Abi also plays soccer for his high school team and has played in games for the varsity program at Montclair High School. For community service, Abi led a program called “Project Poseidon,” a community service organization that tutored kids for 2 hours every Saturday, for 12 weeks, on their ability to speak in public, write essays, and formulate arguments. In terms of his experience being a member of the Jewish community, Abi was a camper at Tel Yehudah camp in the summer of 2020, where he continued to strengthen his bond to his Jewish identity.
New York
Ardsley, NY. Noah Segal is a junior at Ardsley High School. He is the founder and president of the Ardsley Chess Club, and plays varsity soccer for Ardsley High School. Noah is a staff writer at the school newspaper and a violinist in the school chamber orchestra. Noah and his family are members of the CSAIR synagogue in Riverdale. He has attended Young Judaea camps (Tel Yehuda and Sprout Lake) for the past 9 years.
Mount Kisco, NY. Ilan Brusso is an 11th grader at The Leffell School in Hartsdale, NY. Ilan is very active in his school community. He was recently elected vice president of the Leffell student government, participates in his school’s Mock Trial team, and co-heads the Leffell Debate club. In the past, he spent his summers at Camp Ramah in the Poconos and also attended a weeklong writing workshop with Writopia Lab, a local organization. Every week, he volunteers with the JCC of Mid-Westchester, working with children with special needs, a passion of his. While Ilan does not identify solely with one denomination, most of his Jewish experiences have been through the Conservative movement. In his free time, Ilan enjoys reading, writing poetry, and spending time with family and friends.
New York, NY. Adina Gerwin is a member of the class of 2023 at Abraham Joshua Heschel High School in New York City. She is an observant Egalitarian Jew and, having lived with her family in Jerusalem, Israel, for a year, speaks Hebrew. She is also currently spending her junior year living in Hamburg, Germany, through a State Department-run program, the Congress Bundestag Youth Exchange (CBYX) Fellowship. While in Germany, she lives with a homestay family and attends the local school. She is also involved with the Hamburg Jewish community and regularly attends the Jewish youth group, Chazack. Passionate about connecting across lines of difference, she attended the Seeds of Peace dialogue program and spent part of summer 2021 thinking about and participating in interfaith dialogue. While at Heschel High School, she also helped lead the Interfaith club. She enjoys Talmud study and spent last summer learning at the Drisha Institute for Education. For the past two years she has served as contributing writer and editorial board member of the international interfaith magazine KidSpirit, a youth-led magazine with editorial boards worldwide. Along with multiple KidSpirit publications, she has also been published in the NY Jewish Week’s “Fresh Ink” for teens section, and Jgirls magazine. These days, when she is not writing or practicing her German, you can find her walking along the Elbe river, at the Central Library, or simply reading in a cafe.
New York, NY. Marisa Warman Hirschfield is a junior at Ethical Culture Fieldston School in Bronx, New York, where she is an editor of the literary magazine, the arts and culture columnist for the newspaper, and a film major. Marisa is passionate about the arts and what they can do for the world. This past summer, she worked as an intern for a theater management company, where she read new plays and musicals and provided feedback. She frequently writes and shoots movies, and her work has been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Marisa believes in the need to reconcile with the past in order to forge a better future. She serves as a student advisor and research assistant for the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, a non-profit dedicated to making American history meaningful and accessible to K-12 students around the world. A Reform Jew, Marisa attends Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in Manhattan. Judaism informs many of her values, from tikkun olam to fostering community. She is on the executive leadership board of The Jewish Board’s HereNow Project, a youth initiative promoting mental health and wellbeing. She co-leads her school’s Jewish affinity group and is, importantly, very fond of bagels. In her free time, Marisa plays piano and basketball, wanders aimlessly about NYC with friends, and writes. She is overjoyed to be a Bronfman Fellow and is so excited to discuss art, history, Judaism, and beyond this summer.
New York, NY. Noam Medjuck-Bruckner is a junior at the Abraham Joshua Heschel High School in New York City, a proud alum of Beit Rabban Day School, and was a camper at Eden Village Camp for seven summers. Noam is an active member of the Heschel School community as a Grade Representative, Student Ambassador for prospective families, and a frequent service leader and Torah reader in the Orthodox minyan. He is also the Online Editor for the school newspaper, the Heschel Helios, and the head of the Video Gaming Club. Additionally, Noam has several roles in the Heschel Harmonizers acapella group, including Vice Musical Director, Bass Section Leader, and Beatboxer. He is on both the Ultimate and Cross Country teams, the latter of which he led to victory in the fall with a first-place finish in the final meet. Noam attends Darkhei Noam, an Orthodox partnership minyan on the Upper West Side, as well as Ansche Chesed and B’nai Jeshurun, two Egalitarian synagogues where he and his family are longtime members. Noam is on the Teen Council of Ansche Chesed and is also involved in the B’nai Jeshurun teen community, with whom he traveled on a civil rights trip to Alabama and Georgia and an immigration rights trip to Arizona. In addition to these activities, Noam is also a math and Bar Mitzvah tutor and has been learning to play piano and drums.
New York, NY. Dahlia Miller is a junior at The Beacon School in New York City, where she plays on the league-champion Gxrls Ultimate Frisbee Team and helped found Teens Turn Out, a youth-led voter-preregistration initiative. A resident of Brooklyn, she dances with Mark Morris Dance Group’s Student Company. Dahlia is actively involved in her Reform synagogue, Congregation Beth Elohim, working as a madricha, serving as a youth group board member, and participating in a Rosh Hodesh group for teen girls. She has also volunteered throughout NYC as part of Repair the World’s Summer Teen Service Corps. As a fellow with Moving Traditions’ Kol Koleinu Teen Feminist Fellowship, Dahlia is launching “Periods and ME: Menstruation Education,” an online resource hub for young people about menstruation and menstrual justice. A voracious reader, Dahlia is also an occasional poet whose work has been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and the Brooklyn Public Library’s Teen Writing Contest.
New York, NY. Leona Teten is a rising senior at The Bronx High School of Science. She runs for Bronx Science on the Varsity Girls Track and Field and Varsity Girls Cross Country teams. She is the president of the Bronx Science chapter of the Jewish Student Union, as well as a member of their Executive Board for New York State. She’s also a member of the National Honor Society and a recipient of the Bronx Science Brunner Award and JSU EPIC Award. Last summer, she explored Israel on the NCSY Anne Sampson Jerusalem Journey and interned for Weird Science Lab (an incubator) and Worqly (fintech startup) in Tel Aviv. Outside of school, she is in the American Jewish Committee’s Leaders for Tomorrow 2021-2022 cohort, and a member of the StandWithUs Teen Leadership Council. She has worked as a youth leader at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale since 2017. She speaks Russian, Hebrew, and some Spanish. She is a proud alum of the iCAN High School Jewish Leadership Program, the Manhigut Leadership Institute, Eden Village Camp, and Ben Porat Yosef Yeshiva Day School.
New York, NY. Ilan Weiner lives in NYC and attends SAR High School. Ilan is a member of SAR’s Model UN Team and Tennis Team, and also co-founded the Behavioral Economics Club and an initiative for Jewish high school students to create relationships with UAE high schoolers in order to promote mutual understanding.
New York, NY. Daniela Woldenberg has been a student at Yeshivat Ramaz since kindergarten. Prior to Ramaz, she attended La Escuelita, a Spanish-speaking pre-school. She belongs to Darkhei Noam, a halakhic, egalitarian community on the Upper West Side. On Shabbat, she enjoys hosting friends and family for dinner and long walks in the park. She is a volunteer for Repurpose and teaches drawing lessons for senior citizens. At school, she is President of the Feminist Club, Co-President of the Latin American Culture Club, Co-Captain of the Environmental Club, co-editor of Parallax (literary magazine), an active member of Rampo (political and current events club), and Co-Captain of the soccer team. She loves listening to music, playing guitar, writing poetry, and painting.
North Carolina
Chapel Hill, NC. Jacob Hornstein, resident of Chapel Hill, attends Durham Academy, where he participates in varsity Lincoln-Douglas debate and runs cross country and track. His electoral analyses have been published by Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia and Elections Daily. He was a Tikvah Youth Scholar and a World Schools National Double-Finalist. In 2022, he qualified for the National Debate Coaches Association Tournament and advanced to districts for the National Speech and Debate Association.
Oregon
Corvallis, OR. Sofia Isaias-Day is a rising senior at Corvallis High School in Corvallis. One of her biggest passions is writing articles and short stories primarily focused on Jewish feminism and personal experiences. Last year she was a fellow for the Rising Voices Fellowship through the Jewish Women’s Archive, where she published articles on their website, along with other projects that involved and related to the Jewish community. Sofia is a member of the local Jewish community in Corvallis named Beit Am, and had her Bat Mitzvah there when she was thirteen. After her Bat Mitzvah, she has continued to occasionally lead services on High Holidays. Sofia is a member of National Honors Society, Associated Student Body, Tennis Team, and Green Club at CHS.
Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA. Niva Cohen, a student at the Jack M Barrack Hebrew Academy, has attended Jewish schools her whole life. She cares deeply for animal rights and the environment and is the president of her school’s Environmental Action Club. Outside of school, she participates in an acting troupe — the Mechanicals — at MacGuffin Theater and Film Company in Philadelphia. Niva loves to get lost in characters, whether becoming someone else onstage, binging the family drama Parenthood from her couch, or eagerly flipping the crumbling pages of her parents’ high school Jane Austen novels. She views her activities as puzzles awaiting her solving. How can she strike the right wording in a piece she’s writing or editing for her school newspaper, The Chronicle? How can she corner an opposing witness in Mock Trial? How can she crack a character’s armor and get inside of her? How can she make people care — about the environment or about human rights? Niva believes, above all else, that each of these questions has an answer that she is capable of reaching, if only she thinks hard enough. She loves to argue, play both sides, best others, and be bested. Niva can’t wait to pursue truth further this summer and be bested some more.
Texas
Dallas, TX. Samuel Rosen was born in Dallas, TX, and lives there with his parents and younger brother. He is a Reform Jew who grew up in Temple Emanu-El, Dallas, where he attended Pre-School, became a Bar Mitzvah and participated in Confirmation. Samuel is currently a junior at Lakehill Preparatory School, which he has attended since kindergarten. Samuel is a Lakehill Ambassador, a co-founder/facilitator of the Diversity Discussion Group at his school, and a three-sport varsity athlete (football, soccer, and track). He hopes to continue his track career in college. He has taken fashion courses for the last three summers with the School of The New York Times, and he is passionate about the sustainable manufacturing and distribution of garments. He has also taken summer courses in Psychology with the Duke TIP and NSLC programs, and worked at Chipotle last summer as a prep-chef.
Houston, TX. Adam Buchsbaum is an 11th-grade student at Xavier Academy. He previously attended the Shlenker School and the Emery/Weiner School. Adam is captain of Xavier’s tennis team as well as an accomplished pianist. His other current activities include leadership roles in the B’nai Brith Youth Organization, being an Engine of Change Student Ambassador at Holocaust Museum Houston, and volunteering at the Houston Municipal Court’s Teen Court. Adam founded BookTurn, which enables underprivileged children to build a personal library by giving them books sourced from families that have outgrown them. He is an alumnus of the U.S. State Department’s Algerian Youth Leadership Program, the ERJCC Target Teen Leadership Program and the Texas Governor’s School. In his spare time Adam enjoys reading, cooking and baking.
Houston, TX. Noah Frydberg is a junior at Robert M Beren Academy in Houston, Texas. Outside of school, Noah is passionate about business, running an e-commerce platform for home and skin products. Additionally, Noah is involved in many Houston-area organizations, including as a board member for NCSY and participant in the Jewish Teen Philanthropy Initiative and Target Teen Leadership, in which he has received an Arrow Award for his accomplishments. Recently, Noah performed in a theater production, playing Mr. Bingley in Pride and Prejudice. Noah also participates in Model UN and the StandWithUs Teen Leadership Council. When not hard at work on a school or extracurricular activity, Noah enjoys training and competing in endurance events. Growing up in a traditional yet secular Jewish family, Noah attended Hebrew school and was always drawn to Jewish growth and practices. The values Noah grew up with, instilled in him from his parents and synagogue community, drew Noah to begin keeping Shabbat and kashrut with his family. Now attending high school at Robert M Beren Academy and synagogue at Chabad-Lubavitch Center in Houston, Noah identifies with both Chabad-Lubavitch and Modern-Orthodox tradition. Noah credits his parents, Sandy and Felix, with his strong connection to Judaism, as they have always been there to both excite and support his growth as a Jew.
Virginia
Vienna, VA. Daphne Feigin is a junior at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, where she is the president-elect of the school’s Honor Council, which resolves academic integrity violations by facilitating restorative justice, a discussion-based and victim-centered alternative to punishment, and the secretary of the school’s Latin club. Daphne’s family covers the entire Jewish spectrum from secular to Orthodox, and she looks forward to engaging with the ideas of Jews from diverse backgrounds while visiting Israel for the first time this summer.
Canada
Toronto, ON. Elnatan Kelman is in grade 11 at TanenbaumCHAT, a Jewish community high school in Toronto. He is currently taking a wide variety of courses, including chemistry, American history, Hebrew and music. Throughout his two and a half years in high school, Elnatan has participated in a number of extracurriculars, including sports, public speaking and leadership. Most recently, he represented China in a Model UN conference, and continues to tutor once a week for Canadians immigrants with limited English skills. In 2021, he won the Maimonides Moot Court Competition as well as CHAT’s competitive debate tournament, and graduated grade nine and ten with an Academic Award of Merit. He plays piano at home along with flute in the school band. As a madrich (counsellor) in CHAT, Elnatan organizes and executes Shabbatonim (weekend retreats) and helps with leadership initiatives around the school. An avid member of many school clubs, he is involved in activities from an interfaith program with schools of other faiths to Spikeball, as well as acting as the manager of the school volleyball team. Elnatan has been attending Camp Stone, a Bnei Akiva camp in Pennsylvania, for six years, and plans to go back on staff next year. He has always been interested in broadening his horizons and learning from those with vastly different views, and hopes that the Bronfman Fellowship is a means to do so, as well as a way to connect him to people of all different backgrounds.
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