PresenTense Makes News
A great deal has been going on this summer at the PresenTense Institute here in Jerusalem. We put our first post up on the current doings in Arnona just yesterday (the Diaspora Mezuzot Project) and have a few other posts coming later this week.
In the meantime, from today’s Jerusalem Post, here is a really great story on the Institute and their two founders, Ariel and Aharon.
Aharon Horwitz and Ariel Beery are both 28, and they are confident that their plan to change the world is quite practical. They have staked their fortunes and the past two years on a straightforward goal: to restore to Zionism the kind of history-shaping cultural energy that the movement’s early architects envisioned.
And so the two founded PresenTense, a Jerusalem-based hub for a social entrepreneurship training institute, a magazine on Jewish and Israeli culture, a consulting and education service and a network of entrepreneurs, activists and professionals from around the Jewish world.
This motley grouping of initiatives under the PresenTense rubric is no frivolous undertaking, but flows naturally from the pair’s analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of Jewish life. As with Zionism itself, PresenTense is one part ideology, two parts organization.
and from the New York Sun, a story on a subject we feel very strongly about, strengthening alumni networks:
Program Aims To Keep Alumni Connected After Birthright Israel
The Taglit-Birthright Israel program, which has sent about 26,000 young Jews from New York and nearly 200,000 worldwide on free trips to Israel, has its sights set on a new audience: its alumni.
Through a new initiative, called Taglit-Birthright Israel NEXT New York, the group seeks to keep participants of Birthright Israel engaged in Jewish life through programs, seminars, and retreats.