WEST PALM BEACH – Professor Alan M. Dershowitz was the featured guest speaker at two evening events that the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County held on Thursday, January 6, 2011 at the West Palm Beach Marriott, 1001 Okeechobee Boulevard.
The organization’s Business & Professions Division (B&P) held the first program in its Legends Series – “Learn with a Legend” – sponsored by the Carlton Fields law firm, where 80 local businesspeople who made a minimum $1,800 minimum gift to Federation’s Campaign 2011 enjoyed dinner and a private conversation with Dershowitz about the meaning of leadership.
“B&P’s Legends Series was created for the division’s men and women who are strengthening their ties to Jewish life and cultivating the skills to be Jewish leaders,” said B&P Chair Jim Baldinger. “The series offers exclusive opportunities for our future front-runners to hear from some of the world’s current trailblazers, like legal scholar and Israel advocate professor Alan M. Dershowitz.”
Upcoming Legends Series dates include Wednesday, March 16 at noon, featuring Matrix Essential hair product co-founder and local philanthropist Sydell L. Miller; and Tuesday, May 17 for “A Nite at the Improv,” B&P’s closing event of the season.
The community-wide 2011 Campaign Opening, chaired by Michelle and Bowie Jacobson and sponsored by the West Palm Beach Marriott and PNC Wealth Management, was attended by 650 members of the greater Palm Beaches Jewish community. Philanthropist Barbara Kay, past Federation president and host of Federation’s Sunday morning television program, Mosaic, was the evening’s moderator.
“What an inspirational evening with Professor Dershowitz,” said Michelle Jacobson. “Many of the people in the filled-to-capacity room were joining us for their first Federation gathering, and we hope to see them again: volunteering some time, reading to children, engaging with frail seniors or Holocaust victims, attending programs, participating on committees and making their voices heard.”
Professor Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, having joined the faculty at age 25. He has published more than 100 articles in magazines and journals, including The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, The Nation, Commentary, Saturday Review, the Harvard Law Review and Yale Law Journal. Dershowitz is the author of 27 books, including the recent Rights From Wrong, The Case for Israel, The Case For Peace, Blasphemy: How the Religious Right is Hijacking the Declaration of Independence, The First Amendment in An Age of Terrorism, and The Case for Moral Clarity: Israel, Hamas and Gaza. He has also taught and lectured about history, philosophy, psychology, literature, mathematics, theology, music, sports and delicatessens. Dershowitz has been honored with the William O. Douglas First Amendment Award from the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith and by the New York Criminal Bar Association. He graduated from Brooklyn College and the Yale Law School, and has been awarded the honorary doctor of laws degree by Yeshiva University, the Hebrew Union College, Brooklyn College, Syracuse University and Haifa University.
A gift to the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County Campaign 2011 helps Federation and its partner agencies provide a full range of critical social services, and spiritual and educational programs for the elderly, families, teens, children, Israelis and Jews of the former Soviet Union.
B&P provides opportunities for professionals in the greater Palm Beaches to network and build relationships with both the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County and each other through outreach events, networking receptions, educational seminars, mentoring programs and annual fundraisers supporting the Federation and its partner agencies. James B. Baldinger is B&P chair. Dr. David Lickstein is the B&P vice chair and overall B&P campaign chair.
The Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County serves residents from Boynton Beach to Jupiter and west to Wellington as the central Jewish community-building organization of the greater Palm Beaches. Federation strengthens Jewish identity, energizes the community’s relationship with Israel and meets the human needs of the Jewish community in Palm Beach County, Israel and 65 countries around the world.