Welcome to Dr. Evan Parks, The Bronfman Fellowship’s New Director of Education

October 2024 – The Bronfman Fellowship is pleased to welcome Dr. Evan Parks as its Director of Education in North America. In this newly created role, Evan will oversee the Fellowship’s efforts to bring deep Jewish learning and meaningful community-building to a wider audience, while maintaining the quality and excellence of its pedagogy in all of its programming. Evan will guide the Fellowship’s educational approach in the immersive, year-long Fellowship for Jewish teenagers; in programming for the Bronfman alumni network and the wider Jewish community; and in new endeavors such as the Fellowship’s recently launched program for college students, Campus Commons: Building Bridges with Jewish Wisdom.

Evan will also lead The Bronfman Fellowship’s outstanding network of educators. This network includes a diverse group of rabbis, scholars, and artists in North America as well as in Israel, where the Fellowship runs a parallel program for Israeli teens called Amitei Bronfman. In the Jewish community and the world, the Fellowship sees a growing need for educators who can open young people up to introspection, intellectual challenge, and dialogue with people who are different from them. In response to this need, Evan will spearhead efforts to share the Fellowship’s methodologies and approaches with other educators, who can adapt them for the contexts in which they work.

“I believe that the kind of learning that happens with Bronfman, in small groups and in close dialogue with text, is not only personally enriching, but is a critical means for healing and overcoming deep-seated division,” Evan said. “At a moment of Jewish and global crisis, I am eager to expand opportunities for intimate, high-caliber learning within this community and beyond.”

Evan has a long history with The Bronfman Fellowship, having been a Bronfman Fellow himself in 2005. In recent years, Evan has served as a faculty member for The Bronfman Fellowship, leading pluralistic cohorts of Fellows of diverse Jewish backgrounds on a journey of intellectual exploration. 

Becky Voorwinde, CEO of The Bronfman Fellowship, said, “Evan knows the Fellowship incredibly well, having experienced it as both a Fellow and an educator. I’m excited to see how he will continue to grow the intellectual rigor and depth of our educational work with teens, young adults, educators, and the wider Jewish community. We are thrilled to have him on our team.”

Before joining the Bronfman team, Evan taught at Columbia University’s Department of Germanic Languages and Core Curriculum, where he was a finalist for the University’s highest teaching honor, the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching. Evan received his Ph.D. in German and Comparative Literature from Columbia University and holds a B.A. in European Cultural Studies from Brandeis University. As an educator, he is particularly interested in the intersection of liberal education and Jewish learning. Read more about Evan here. 

Evan’s teachers and students have expressed enthusiasm for his new role with the Fellowship:

Rabbi Larry Edwards, Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Or Chadash in Chicago, who taught Evan when he was a high school-aged Fellow, said, “Evan is a gifted scholar and teacher. He is a deeply reflective student of the thinkers and poets who found a way through the upheavals of the 20th century. On a personal level, I am delighted to see the next generation take up and expand the Bronfman canon. Future fellows will benefit from Evan’s intellectual energy and menschlichkeit, and that will benefit all of us.”

Caleb Levine, a Harvard junior, experienced Evan’s teaching as a Bronfman Fellow in 2021. “Learning with Evan has been perhaps my most rewarding and joyful intellectual experience,” Caleb said. “His excitement for text is incredibly contagious, and he inspires in his students a deep hunger for discovery. To study with Evan is to find comfort and even revelatory potential in the uncertain, in the not yet known. And by nurturing community through engagement with challenging texts, he brings us closer both to each other and ourselves.”

The Bronfman Fellowship is currently accepting applications for its 2025 cohort. The application is open to students who identify as Jewish, are in 11th grade, and live in the U.S. or Canada. To learn more and apply, visit www.bronfman.org. Applications close on December 2, 2024. For more information, please contact help@bronfman.org. 

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Bio of Dr. Evan Parks:

Dr. Evan Parks is the Director of Education for The Bronfman Fellowship. Evan’s research treats modern European literature and culture, especially the entanglement of German and Jewish intellectual traditions. He is also interested in correspondences between Jewish diaspora writers and Hebrew literature. Evan is a Visiting Scholar at NYU’s Center for the Humanities, and is currently completing a book that explores tensions between the post-Shoah poet Paul Celan and his philosophical readers, especially Hans-Georg Gadamer, Theodor W. Adorno, and Jacques Derrida. 

As an educator, Evan is interested in the intersection of liberal education and Jewish learning. He taught at Columbia University’s Department of Germanic Languages and  Core Curriculum, where he was a finalist for the University’s highest teaching honor, the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching. Evan served as Faculty for the Bronfman Fellowship for four years (2019, 2021, 2023, and 2024).

Evan received his Ph.D. in German and Comparative Literature from Columbia University and holds a B.A. in European Cultural Studies from Brandeis University. He was a 2020-21 Fellow with the Leo Baeck Institute London. Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, Evan was a Bronfman Fellow in 2005. He lives in Manhattan with his partner Eliana and daughter Selah.