American Jewish University

I mean, if you are a, a parent of, of kids, finding the Jewish programming around the kids, where then you can meet other parents who are in the same stage of life as you.

And then there's always, you know, the classes like the Intro to Judaism program at the American Jewish University, of which I'm on the advisory board, which is the most popular, most successful intro to Judaism course of its kind that you can take online from anywhere in the world.

I mean, there are cohorts in Korea and Mexico, and it's really cool.

And that's just, like, a really great deeper crash course in the basics of...

It continues now.

He's still a wonderful friend and mentor, but my professional relationship continued through my graduate studies, and I served at the university, what became American Jewish University, for a total of twenty-four years.

And in that period of time, I oversaw development and advancement, what we eu-euphemistically consider fundraising, marketing and sales, right? And strategic planning and macro issues of the university.

And fast-forward to two thousand and eighteen, I left.

She's joining us from...

American Jewish University.

And this is going to be an absolute banger.

And with all that, this is where I hand it over to Tamar.

I think that's the link.

But it's the Mazer School.

I run the Mazer School of Education at American Jewish University.

You don't have to be Jewish to come to us.

So let's start working on that.

And so I came to L.A. to American Jewish University for their summer Ulpan.

So it was like one year of college level Hebrew in a summer.

And so when

2022.

She's also the chief curator at American Jewish University.

Used to be.

Used to be.

Absolutely.

Paris, I never thought about loneliness until...

During the pandemic, in my previous role at American Jewish University, we've had this amazing platform for programming that I helped program along with my then boss, Rabbi Sherry Hirsch.

And we've hosted... a psychologist from the East Coast whom I love named Dale Atkins, who also came back to Reservoir to work with our artist.

Wow.

Um, then I went to a community day school for middle school, and that same year my family went to Israel for the first time, and I started going to Jewish summer camp at Camp Alonim, which is at the Brandeis-Bardin campus of the American Jewish University in Los Angeles.

Those two experiences together, combined with starting in a, in a Jewish day school environment, totally transformed my life because I saw for the first time a really embodied and lived Jewish experience that wasn't just the teachers at Sunday school.

It was the people who were leading those institutions and the kids who were singing around the Shabbos table at camp, the rabbis who weren't just wearing suits and ties but who were wearing shorts and playing baseball with us, and that's where I first learned to daven.