The 2011 Mandelkorn Distinguished Service Award! 

Dear Colleagues:

 

    The JCSA Young Professional Award is given annually to Young Professionals who have distinguished themselves through exemplary service in their agencies and communities.  This competitive and prestigious award provides an opportunity to recognize talented individuals who are dedicated to professional careers in the Jewish community.  Through this recognition, we not only reward outstanding work and behavior, we also pay tribute to the invaluable contributions of professional leadership in the Jewish communal sector.  While the selection process is competitive, nominating a younger colleague and recognizing his or her contributions is, in itself, a significant honor.  Please consider nominating a worthy colleague and sharing this announcement.  

Sincerely,

 

Young Professional Award Committee Chairs

 

Howard Charish                                                         Jay Spector, JEVS Philadelphia

             

---

2010 Award Winners:

 

David Cygielman and Eva Stern were named the 2010 winners of the Young Professional Award of the Jewish Communal Service Association, it was announced by Howard Charish and Jay Spector, Co-Chairmen of the JCSA Awards Committee.

YPro Award Press Release

General Assembly & YPro Award Invitation - New Orleans, LA 2010

Eva Stern

     Eva Stern is the Director of Training at the Jewish Outreach Institute (JOI). JOI’s mission is to honor Jewish values by promoting a more welcoming and inclusive North American Jewish community that embraces intermarried families and unengaged Jews, and encourages their increased participation in Jewish life. At the JOI, Eva is responsible for coaching and consulting for more than 400 Jewish communal professionals and volunteer leaders from Jewish organizations across North America. She is also a volunteer Young Adult Coordinator at the Town and Village Synagogue in New York, where she implements creative monthly Shabbat, social, and social justice programming. Previously, Eva worked as a Teacher at Kesher Newton in Newton, MA and multiple synagogues throughout Boston and the Lower Manhattan area, teaching Justice, Ethics and Values and Hebrew language at both.   Eva is very active in developing Jewish culture in young teens, which shows in her work: worked as a counselor in BIMA implementing Jewish education for those in summer programs and worked as a Program Staff Member at Elat Chayyim supervising a variety of programs for youth that incorporated Judaic culture into arts, sports, and drama activities. Eva is a graduate of Brandeis University where she earned both her B.A and M.A in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies (2002 & 2004, respectively).

     Rabbi Kerry Olitzky, JOI Executive Director wrote: “Eva has contributed importantly to the growth and development of JOI. She has very high professional standards and challenges all of us, including those of us to whom she reports. This is not an easy task for a young professional, but one she carries off with aplomb.”

The director of adult services at the JCC in Chicago, Ilene Uhlmann told us this: “Over the years our agency has availed itself of Eva’s expertise in Outreach and she has done an amazing job of communicating the vision, goals, methodology of Outreach, as well as mentoring my colleagues to effect a change in attitudes, language and sensitivities. …The impact of her work can be measured in the success that we have had in reaching out to the unaffiliated and underserved in the Jewish community…”

     Additionally, her supervisor, Paul Golin, commented that “I am in awe of Eva’s excitement about her work and her genuine interest in helping and learning from others. We know that the training and consulting Eva has conducted over the past 5 years within the Jewish community has lead to the deeper engagement of thousands of Jewish individuals and families, especially intermarried families, who otherwise would not currently be participating in Jewish communal life.   She exemplifies everything we should be looking for in a young Jewish communal professional.”

     

 

David Cygielman

     David Cygielman, 29, is the founder and CEO of Moishe House, an organization that serves as a hub for young Jewish adults in North America and beyond to create dynamic community and to build Jewish identity in meaningful and enduring ways. In just a few short years, David has made the Moishe House into a growing phenomenon--now the largest Jewish organization in the world for young adults after college.

      David is a graduate of the University of California-Santa Barbara in Business/Economics in 2003, where he was a golden key scholar. In 2003 he chaired the Super Sunday event for the Jewish Federation, raising $120,000, and by 2004, he was already chairing the Santa Barbara Jewish Festival. Among his many accomplishments and early awards, David chose to highlight his creation of Feed the Need, a community homeless feeding organization he established at the age of 16 in the Bay Area. Shortly after college graduation, David became the Executive Director of Forest Foundation, managing a $20 Million private foundation on a part-time basis, securing an endowment of $20 million. He became the full time director of the Foundation and was able to increase the staff to more than 100, which enabled the expansion of programming and the distribution of more than $1.5 million in charitable giving. In 2008, David became the CEO and founder on Moishe House…and, In 2009, David became the recipient of the Avi Chai Fellowship.

     David was nominated for the JCSA Young Professional Award by Lynn Schusterman who told us that “David is an exemplar of all that our community is seeking. His commitment to Jewish peoplehood, his creativity, his positive spirit, his understanding of his generation, his innovative way of finding solutions to every obstacle, his humility—even in the light of his successes—and his belief in what community can accomplish all represent qualities that can and should be the hallmarks of our current and future leadership…in short order, under David’s skilled management, the Moishe House model has expanded to 31 houses in 10 countries fostering a sense of peoplehood and Jewish vitality in communities as far flung as Buenos Aires, Cape Town, London, Beijing, Tel Aviv, Philadelphia, and many others…

     “In short, David is the kind of innovative, entrepreneurial Jewish leader who can and will make a dramatic and enduring impact on Jewish identity and peoplehood…The support, recognition and prestige that the JCSA Young Professional Award affords will propel David forward in a manner that will enable our community to more quickly and fully reap the rich and bountiful rewards of his visionary leadership.”

 

 

* 2008 Award Winners: David Michaels, Naomi Leah Sage and Cara Unowsky were the 2008 winners of the Jewish Communal Service Association Young Professional Award; it was announced by Howard Charish and Jay Spector, Co-Chairmen of the JCSA Awards Committee. The winners were honored during the General Assembly of United Jewish Communities meeting November 16-20, 2008 in Jerusalem, Israel. The JCSA Award, which includes a $1,000 honorarium, was underwritten by the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, the Mandel Foundation and the Bernard Rodkin Fund of the United Israel Appeal – Federations of Canada.

* 2007 Winners: Edward M. Bruckner and Shoshannah D. Frydman were the 2007 winners of the Jewish Communal Service Association Young Professional Award, it was announced by Howard Charish and Jay Spector, Co-Chairmen of the JCSA Awards Committee. The award was presented during the General Assembly of United Jewish Communities in Nashville, November 11-13, 2007. The JCSA award was underwritten by the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies and the Mandel Foundation

* 2006 Winners: Alisha Goodman, Ilana Aisen, and Alyssa Abrahamson were the 2006 winners of the Young Professional Award. JCSA thanks the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, the Mandel Foundation and the Professional Leadership Project for underwriting these awards.

*2005 Winners: Amy Wagner Biloon, Lisa Colton, and Leonard Petlakh were the 2005 winners of the Young Professional Award and were recognized at the UJC General Assembly in Toronto. The award was funded by the Mandel Foundation and the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies.

* 2004 Winners: Melanie Kohler Levav and David Rosenberg were the 2004 winners of the Young Professional Award and were honored at the General Assembly of United Jewish Communities, which was held in Cleveland, Ohio, November 14-17, 2004. The JCSA Young Professional Awards were funded through generous support from the Mandel Foundation of Cleveland, Ohio, and the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies in New York.

Louis Kraft, born in 1891 in Moscow, Russia, became a model and an example for his work in the Jewish communal profession. After serving as Executive Director of the Bronx YM & YMHA, Kraft became involved in the Jewish Welfare Board (JWB) where he finally became the Executive Director of the organization. In 1947, Kraft helped establish the World Federation of YMHAs and Jewish Community Centers and has often been referred to as "the architect of the Jewish community center movement." Click here to view past Kraft Award recipients.