Rabbi Nathan Laufer

Residence : Jerusalem, Israel

Biographical information

Rabbi Nathan Laufer is President Emeritus of the Wexner Heritage Foundation. The Wexner Heritage Foundation educates Jewish leaders in the traditions, history, thought and contemporary challenges of the Jewish people. In his seventeen years of leadership of the Foundation, including nine as President and CEO, Rabbi Laufer developed and brought the Foundation’s intensive program to 31 cities across North America, empowering over 1300 of its most influential lay leaders.

For the past two years Rabbi Laufer has been on Sabbatical in Israel. He spent his first year as Scholar in Residence at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, a center for research and education developing pluralistic, compelling approaches to Jewish thought and life, and a second year as Senior Fellow at The Shalem Center, a Jerusalem think tank addressing social, religious and political issues in Israel and the Jewish world. While in Jerusalem, Rabbi Laufer authored his first book, “Leading the Passover Journey,” released by Jewish Lights in March of 2005 and is completing his second book, “The Torah of Leadership,” to be published by Jewish Lights in the spring of 2006.

Before joining Wexner Heritage in 1986, Rabbi Laufer was Director of East Coast Educational Programs for the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Director of Legal Affairs for the Coalition to Free Soviet Jews. Rabbi Laufer received his Rabbinic Ordination from Yeshiva University, his Juris Doctor degree from Fordham University, and his Leadership Educator Certificate at Harvard University. He writes, teaches and lectures across North America and Israel regarding Leadership, Jewish identity and meaning, Israel and Zionism, and the future of North American Jewry.

Rabbi Laufer, a member of the New York Board of Rabbis and the New York State Bar Association, is married to Sharon Laufer and is the father of four children, including triplets.

Discussion topics

• Jewish Holidays
  
  • Leading the Passover Journey: The Seder’s Meaning Revealed, The Haggadah’s Story Retold
  • Meeting God: Uncovering the Secret Meaning of the Jewish Holidays
  • Repentance and Leadership: Two Parallel processes for generating change in our lives
• Leadership
  
  • The Torah of Leadership: How Every Leader can reach the Promised Land
  • The Ten Commandments of Leadership
  • Mosaic Leadership
• Jewish Identity
  
  • Why be Jewish, anyway?
  • Going, Going, Gone?: Strategies for rescuing the disappearing American Jewish Community
  • Everything you always wanted to know about Judaism (* but were afraid to ask!)
• Israel, Zionism
  
  • Recovering the spiritual meaning of Israel and Zionism today
• Spirituality
  
  • The Loneliness of God: Understanding our purpose as human beings…and as Jews

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