by Dr. Shira Fishman The primary selection criterion for the Bronfman Fellowships (BYFI) is to identify “promising” Jewish leaders. How do you see, measure and judge “promise” of Jewish leadership amongst such a diverse pool of applicants, especially when candidates are still in high school? As a seasoned application reader who served on the admissions committee at Barnard College, I initially approached the task of reading applications for the Bronfman Fellowships with the same criteria I used to evaluate college applicants. I quickly was surprised to find that reading applications through this lens was impractical. As an alumna of the program, I was much more forgiving of applicants, wanting to give them the benefit of the doubt, rather than trying to harshly critique their application. … [Read more...]

by Naamah Paley Our bi-annual meetings of the Alumni Advisory Board (AAB) of the Bronfman Fellowships in Israel (BYFI) start off like any other Board meeting: bagels and coffee around a large table with smiling faces, notepads, and assorted pens and flip-charts. But if you look closer at the faces, you’d notice that those sitting around the table are significantly younger and less, how shall I say, financially advantaged than those around most boards in the Jewish world. The twenty-person AAB, which serves as a “think tank” for alumni life, provides substantive opportunities for a group of young Jews to share their considerable skills and insights. As an alumnus of the Bronfman Fellowships and, now, as a young professional working for the organization as Senior Program Officer, I have … [Read more...]