A year after philanthropist Robert Beren’s death, his daughter, Julie Platt, and her Sinai Temple congregation in Los Angeles have launched a new program in his honor, educating a cohort of Jewish high schoolers about combating antisemitism and the importance of allyship.

The Beren Scholars Program, as it is known, launched on Sunday in a pilot version for 16 high school juniors and seniors from within the synagogue, but Rabbi Erez Sherman, Sinai Temple’s co-senior rabbi, who is leading this new program, said the initiative will expand nationally next year.

“The three major goals are: one is to have these students actually identify what antisemitism is, to know the roots of it; two is combating it, which is obviously a bit amorphous for teens; and three is learning allyship, which we will actually do with the relationships that we already have built in the Sinai Temple community, both within L.A. and nationally,” Sherman told eJewishPhilanthropy.

The idea from the program, which is funded by the Robert M. Beren Family Foundation, came from Sherman’s experience in the past year, seeing many of the synagogue’s parents consulting him and the other clergy about where their children should go to college, “as if the rabbi were the academic counselor,” he quipped.

“What they were really asking was, ‘Where will my child be safe as a Jew?’” he said.

Sherman said he developed the program from there, with the goal of making the answer to that question: anywhere.

“[Platt] was really adamant that these students, with the tools that we are giving them, can go to any college campus and be successful as proud Jews, not withdraw from the campus and go to a place where we might think it’s safer or not,” Sherman said. He noted that Platt, in addition to her role as board chair of the Jewish Federations of North America, also has deep ties to the University of Pennsylvania, which has seen a large number of antisemitic incidents even before Oct. 7, where she serves as vice chair of the board of trustees.

“So I want to really stress that — God willing — we’ll give them the tools, whether it’s a Columbia or a Harvard or a Vanderbilt or wherever,” Sherman said.

While the focus of the program is on combating antisemitism, Sherman said the initiative is also meant to instill Jewish pride and identity in the participants, not just the ability to combat hate.

“We want to create leaders of desire, not leaders of need,” he said. 

The program consists of monthly academic seminars, in which experts or interesting figures make presentations and answer questions, followed by time for the participants to discuss and digest, along with visits to the Holocaust Museum LA and the city’s Museum of Tolerance, as well as a Shabbat on the UCLA campus with student leaders and a unity Shabbat with members of other faiths. Sherman said the cohort will also go to the state capital of Sacramento to meet with lawmakers and hear about the legal and political aspects of combating antisemitism.

“It is now our great blessing to carry on our father’s legacy knowing that our work will support the next generation of Jewish leaders,” Platt said in a statement. “We hope their lives will be filled with proper intention to spread light unto the communities in which they will join. In a world where Jews are thinking to retreat, our Beren Scholars will not hide. Instead, they will stand tall, speak out, and create a world of empathetic, intellectual, strong, joyful Jewish leaders.”

The program kicked off on Sunday with a seminar led by Temple Sinai’s rabbi emeritus, David Wolpe, fresh off his year teaching at Harvard University’s Divinity School, where he served on — and eventually quit — the school’s antisemitism advisory group.

“He talked about his experiences at Harvard and the importance of having unbiased conversations and also having conversations where you’re willing to listen to the other side and hear what they are saying so that you can create an [effective] argument,” one of the participants, Leah Tehrani, told eJP. “He also talked about how [at Harvard] he felt that because he wasn’t able to make a difference on the [antisemitism advisory group], he stepped down, and that made an even larger difference.” 

Wolpe, who has also served as the Anti-Defamation League’s inaugural rabbinic fellow, told eJP that he was impressed by the “wonderful, interested, passionate [participants], and I think this program will help prepare them to be strong Israel advocates and beyond.” 

He added that the students asked “all the usual stuff” about his time at Harvard. “Should they apply to colleges like [Harvard]? And if so, what kind of preparation should they do?”

In addition to Wolpe, the speakers are expected to include: Sarah Idan, the 2017 Miss Iraq who has become an advocate for Israel; Oscar-winning film producer Deborah Oppenheimer; ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt; Pastor John Paul Foster; and Rev.erend Johnnie Moore.

Tehrani, who is active in a number of programs at Temple Sinai and generally in the L.A. community, said she was drawn to apply in order to better develop her advocacy skills. 

“Hopefully, I will be able to say something that might stick with people, so that over time — not right away — their perspective will start to change,” she said.