Tag Archives: Israel

Jew of the Week: Ruth Porat

“The Most Powerful Woman on Wall Street”

Ruth Porat

Ruth Porat (b. 1957) was born in England to Jewish immigrants from Israel. Her father was a Holocaust survivor who escaped to a kibbutz and fought in Israel’s War of Independence. He later became a physicist and moved the family first to Massachusetts and then to California, while doing research at Harvard, MIT and the National Accelerator Lab in Palo Alto. Ruth Porat studied at Stanford, and has Master’s degrees from both The London School of Economics and The Wharton School. Throughout most of her career, Porat worked for Morgan Stanley, rising all the way up to the rank of CFO and Executive Vice President. Before that, she served as the Vice Chair of their Investment Banking division, and the head of their international Financial Institutions Group. During the 2008 Financial Crisis, Porat was a chief adviser to the US Treasury, and was praised for helping to save AIG from total collapse, an event that would have completely tanked the economy. Not long ago, she was nicknamed the “Most Powerful Woman on Wall Street”. At the same time, Porat has been married for over 30 years, and is a mother of three, maintaining a steady “work-family mix”, as she calls it, and encouraging her co-workers to do the same. As one of only a few women with such high positions in the financial world, she has become an important role model. She is also a breast cancer survivor. In the past, working as a co-head of Morgan Stanley’s tech investment division, she directed funds to companies like eBay, and Amazon in their early days, helping to turn them into the giant companies they are today. Due to her vast knowledge of both the financial sector and the digital world, she was recently hired by Google, and as of last week, is their new CFO.

Words of the Week

Transgressions of man towards God – Yom Kippur atones for them. Transgressions of man towards man, Yom Kippur does not atone for them, until one seeks forgiveness from one’s fellow.
– Talmud, Yoma 85b

Jew of the Week: Rabbi Col. Jacob Goldstein

Rabbi Goldstein (Courtesy: JEM/Chabad.org)

Jacob Z. Goldstein (b. 1947) was born in Brooklyn to a devout Chabad family. In 1967, the Lubavitcher Rebbe instituted the Tefillin Campaign to get all Jews – especially those distant from Jewish religious practice – to regularly don tefillin. Goldstein diligently took up the cause. He was soon visiting a military base to provide tefillin for Jewish soldiers. By 1977, the base’s Catholic chaplain requested that Goldstein enlist in the army as a chaplain himself. With blessings from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Goldstein agreed. He has since served all over the world, in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, Bosnia and South Korea, Grenada, Israel, and even Cuba’s notorious Guantanamo Bay. Following the 9/11 attacks, Rabbi Goldstein was the Chief Chaplain at Ground Zero. Similarly, he was in charge of the chaplaincy in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Over the years, he has helped to permit wearing beards for religious reasons in the armed forces, bring kosher meals to American soldiers, pave the way for more Jewish chaplains, and establish holiday observances and prayer services at military bases around the globe. He has risen to the rank of Colonel, and despite the typical mandatory retirement age of 60, has remained in the armed forces for an additional eight years due to a lack of chaplains in the force. Rabbi Goldstein finally retired last month after 38 years of dedicated service. In addition to his military role, he is also the longest-serving chairman of his Community Board in New York, and has been noted as a successful local politician, and a promoter of interracial cooperation and understanding.

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Words of the Week

Fundamental to Judaism is the belief in One God, and the quest to seek unity in all things… What is truly remarkable is that this idea has also gained prominence in the sciences, particularly in recent years. Increasingly, scientific theory and research is focusing on the endeavor to express all physical phenomena in a single formula and, more importantly, to discover the singular unifying force which underlies all other forces, so that all other forces are shown to be aspects and outgrowths of this singular force…
– The Lubavitcher Rebbe

Rabbi Goldstein with the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Courtesy: JEM/Chabad.org)

Jew of the Week: Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein

In Memory of an Outstanding Rabbi

Rabbi Lichtenstein

Aharon Lichtenstein (1933-2015) was born in Paris, France. His family fled the War in 1941, settling in the U.S., where Lichtenstein grew up. He went on to study at Yeshiva University, earning both a B.A. and rabbinic ordination, and continued his studies at Harvard, graduating with a Ph.D in Literature. He returned to Yeshiva University as a Talmud teacher, and then served as its dean (Rosh Yeshiva). After several years in that post, he made aliyah to Israel in 1971, and headed another Yeshiva, while quickly becoming a famed scholar and the central leader for Modern Orthodox and Religious Zionist Jews. He soon became one of the world’s top authorities in Halakha (Jewish law), too. Working with the ‘Takana’ organization, Rabbi Lichtenstein helped to combat harassment within the religious world, while also supporting the cause of women and encouraging women’s Torah studies. His support and outreach efforts spread beyond the religious world, encompassing secular communities, and even non-Jewish communities. Rabbi Lichtenstein also wrote a number of highly-acclaimed texts and commentaries. A noted scholar, he could easily quote both Jewish wisdom and secular philosophy. Last year he was awarded Israel’s highest honour – the Israel Prize. Sadly, Rabbi Lichtenstein passed away last week. Upon news of his passing, religious and political leaders from across the spectrum united to eulogize and honour him, including both Ultra-Orthodox and Reform rabbis, as well as conservative and liberal politicians. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described him as a “Zionist leader and Torah scholar of unparalleled stature… He loved the Land of Israel, the people of Israel, and the Torah of Israel.”

Words of the Week

God transcends all definitions, including the definition of “existence”.
– Maimonides (Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon)