H eadlines
Philly Faces: Rabbi Akiva Pollack
Russian Jews sitting in their
center, learning about Judaism,
going on trips. And I fell in
love with the program when
he told us that,” Pollack said.

He contacted the New York
office and told them he’d love
to bring RAJE to Philly.

Today, Pollack is the CEO
of RAJE Philly, teaching and
traveling with young local Jews
to Israel, Poland and elsewhere
in Europe. Participants who
complete the Leadership
Fellowship are eligible for
those free trips.

“We’re really
trying hard to help create more
Jewish leaders,” Pollack said.

And name aside, they don’t
discriminate: Around 75% of
their participants are Russian-
American Jews.

P H I LLY FACES
JESSE BERNSTEIN | JE STAFF
THERE WASN’T ANYTHING
quite like the organization
Russian American Jewish
Experience in Philadelphia
before Rabbi Akiva Pollack
showed up.

Pollack, 45, learned about
RAJE in 2009, having just
come to Philadelphia to work
at CBS Community Center,
home to Congregation Beth
Solomon in Somerton. Soon
after he arrived, he met a rabbi
who worked with RAJE in New
York, which was the only place
at the time to get involved with
the organization.

“And he told us all about
programming, and he told
us all about how they liter-
ally have hundreds of young
Rabbi Akiva Pollack speaks at Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva in Poland during
a RAJE trip. 
Photo by Paul Minkovsky
since 2009. Are you still
attracted to the organization’s
mission for the same reasons?
I’ll tell you the truth, maybe
you shouldn’t put this in print,
but I do it for the free trip
[laughs]. I do love going from
place to place, I love traveling.

So that’s always very exciting,
which actually makes it a little
bit hard now, because every-
thing’s closed, you can’t really
get around.

But I love teaching about
Judaism, teach about Israel,
and then actually going and
seeing it in practice.

That’s what really gets me
excited, to be able to teach that
and give it over to everybody
and show how real Judaism is,
how ancient Judaism is.

What’s the most significant
You’ve been a part of RAJE change you’ve seen in the
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8 MARCH 4, 2021
JEWISH EXPONENT
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



H EADLINES
population that RAJE serves?
It’s a little bit more diffi -
cult to get people interested
in a free trip to Israel — it just
doesn’t mean as much as it did
10 years ago. So you need to
add some things to it — our
European option, the Poland
trip and things like that. But
in general, people are still very
interested. one Zoom or two Zooms. And
we’ll have 50, 60 people at each
Zoom session from all over
the country. And I see that’s
exciting to people because they
get to meet people from all over
the place.

In many ways, it’s actually
better for us because we’re able
to have educators from all over
the country that’re able to speak.

Another thing that we
did recently — we’re actually
starting tonight, so I don’t
know how it’s going to go,
but I’m really excited about
it — we did something called
the Olami Pro Series, which
is really focused not on Jewish
education and Israel, but on
professional development. And
we have major CEOs, we have
Hollywood stars coming in,
and teaching students how to
really be successful in the fi elds
that they are in. ●
Name: Masonic Village
Width: 5.5 in
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Comment: JE
Is there anything you’ve
done diff erently during the
pandemic that you want to
continue doing?
We’ve really worked hard
on making Zoom as exciting
and as accessible as possible.

We have very few in-person
classes. So what we’ve done is
have branches of RAJE all
joined together and done our
Leadership Fellowship, instead
of it just being to Philadelphia,
coming to one community
center, we have all of the jbernstein@jewishexponent.com;
branches coming together on 215-832-0740
Non-Orthodox Converts to Gain
Israeli Citizenship
I SR AEL
BY BEN SALES | JTA.ORG
ISRAEL MUST GRANT
citizenship to Jews who
converted to Judaism in Israel
under non-Orthodox auspices,
its Supreme Court ruled on
March 1, possibly igniting
another round in the long-run-
ning government battle over
who the state should recognize
as Jewish.

Th e decision, written by
Chief Justice Esther Hayut,
comes less than a month before
national elections.

Israel’s Law of Return
off ers automatic citizenship to
anyone with at least one Jewish
grandparent. Th e state also
generally recognizes those who
converted to Judaism under
Orthodox standards.

Past Supreme
Court decisions have mandated that
the state also recognize Jews
who converted outside of Israel
under non-Orthodox authority,
provided they live in a recog-
nized Jewish community.

Non-Orthodox converts, such
as Conservative or Reform Jews,
however, still oft en face hurdles
in obtaining Israeli citizenship
and are sometimes denied.

The March 1 decision
extends the right to citizen-
ship to those who converted to
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Comment: JE-Th e Poplar
Amazing v iews are
just the beginning
NOW LEASING
R EC EI V E 2 M O NTH S FR EE O N OU R STU D I O, 1, 2, 3 A N D 4 B ED ROO MS
THEPOPLAR.COM 9 0 0 N 9 T H S T R E E T, P H I L A D E L P H I A , PA 1 9 1 2 3
( 215) 613-9585
See Citizenship, Page 10
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MARCH 4, 2021
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