In honor of the 18th anniversary of the passing of Ruth Wildes, late wife of Wildes & Weinberg Senior Partner Leon Wildes, and mother of Managing Partner Michael Wildes, the community was invited to hear from distinguished colleague, Harvard Professor and noted attorney and author, Alan Dershowitz. The event was held on November 23, 2013 and was sponsored by Manhattan Jewish Experience (MJE), a non-profit organization founded by Rabbi Mark N. Wildes in 1998. Rabbi Wildes is Leon Wildes’ son and Michael Wildes’ brother.
More than 500 guests attended the event including luminaries Rabbi Norman Lamm, Rabbi David Bleich, and Actress Kelley Rutherford, as a testimony to the prominence of the illustrious speaker.
Professor Alan M. Dershowitz is a Brooklyn native and a graduate of Yale Law School, who joined the Harvard Law School faculty at age 25 after clerking for Justice Arthur Goldberg. Dershowitz has been called both “the nation’s most peripatetic civil liberties lawyer” and “Israel’s single most visible defender.” He has published more than 1000 articles in magazines, newspapers, journals and blogs including The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, and Ha’aretz. Additionally, Professor Dershowitz is the author of 30 fiction and non-fiction works with a worldwide audience, including The New York Times #1 bestseller Chutzpah, The Vanishing American Jew and The Case for Israel 1 &2. Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel has said of Dershowitz: “If there had been a few people like Alan Dershowitz during the 1930s and 1940s, the history of European Jewry might have been different.”
MJE, the organization which sponsored the event, is a cutting edge program for young Jewish professionals in their 20’s and 30’s, with little or no background in Judaism who are interested in connecting more to each other, to their community, and to Judaism. MJE is a place where young men and women can explore Jewish life and meet new people in a wide range of inclusive, engaging and innovative programs for thousands of young Jewish professionals, including parties, an annual ski trip, classes, beginner prayer services, marching in the Israel day parade, Friday night dinners and much much more. MJE was founded in memory of Ruth B. Wildes z”l For more information about MJE, click here: http://www.jewishexperience.org
Each year MJE is honored to host another major personality in the Jewish world. Previous speakers have included Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Dr. Norman Lamm, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, Rabbi Mayer Soloveitchick , Dr. Jacob J. Schacter, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin and other notables.
To hear the Professor’s address, click here: http://www.yutorah.org/lectures/lecture.cfm/801005/Guest_Speaker_MJE/The_Vanishing_Jew