Schwaber awarded for civic achievement
Jeff Schwaber, third from left, won the Benjamin Ourisman Memorial Award for Civic Achievement at the Bender Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington’s IMAGINE event on May 16. He appears with event chairs, from left, Matthew Weinberg, Saul Goldfarb, Mark Levitt, Tracy Bloom Schwartz, Beth Glassman and John Ourisman. Photo by rlstevensphotography
Bronfman picks Guggenheim
Judah Guggenheim, a student at Berman Hebrew Academy in Rockville, was one of 26 11th graders chosen to participate in the Bronfman Fellowship, a five-week program of study and travel in Israel, followed by a year of programming centered around pluralism, social responsibility and Jewish texts.
Judah is a junior captain of Berman’s Model UN and Mock Trial teams as well as a co-head of the Israel Action Committee. He is the founding captain of the school’s debate team and participates in national math competitions including the AMCs and Yale MMATHs. His love of Jewish learning has led him to participate in the national Chidon HaTanch Bible competition and in the Yeshiva University High School
Bekiut Talmud program.
He also blows shofar on the High Holidays and reads Megilat Esther on Purim for patients at local hospitals.
Richman takes the bimah
Rebecca Richman, a Bethesda native, is a graduating senior at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, outside Philadelphia. Richman will be assistant rabbi and beit midrash director at Germantown Jewish Centre, in Philadelphia.
A graduate of Walter Johnson High School, she is an alumna of Camp Havaya, where she was a camper, counselor and rosh teva (nature director). Richman graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Brandeis University.
As a rabbinical student, Richman worked as student rabbi for the Brandeis
Reconstructionist Organization, completed a unit of clinical pastoral education at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, and served as rabbinic intern for Germantown Jewish Centre. While in school, she became a soferet (scribe), Hebrew calligrapher, ceramicist and mikvah shomeret (guide).
