Class Correspondent

5th Reunion
June 7-9, 2013

Hi, Class of 2008! I know that you are all excited for our upcoming fifth Reunion, our first since graduation. I hope that everyone gets a chance to catch up with classmates in June. Being a Brandeis citizen is a true honor — I am so thrilled to share in all the milestones that have happened in each of your lives. On a personal note, I was engaged to Alan Cherney in December 2011 and entered Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in the fall. Alan graduated from SUNY Downstate Medical School and is working as an emergency resident at Lehigh Valley Health Network.

Helaina Skop, an MD/PhD candidate at Columbia University, is engaged to Jason Lehrer, a personal financial adviser at Main Street Financial Group specializing in retirement planning. Zahava Alter Lipton and Abraham Lipton were married on July 1, 2012, in East Brunswick, N.J. Dahlia Yoeli and Jennifer Weston served as bridesmaids, and Benson Way, MA’08, was a groomsman. Also celebrating with them were Deborah Beth Medows, Adam Turek-Herman ’06, Lauren Katz, Kenneth Rudinger, Gail Goldspiel ’09, Lauren Schneider, Paul Weinger ’06, Erica Greenblatt and Kaila Schwartz. Zahava and Abraham live in Astoria, N.Y. Jacob Kamaras was engaged to Megan Marcus on Aug. 7, 2012. Jacob is the editor-in-chief at a Boston-based startup Jewish news service called JNS.org, and Megan is founder and CEO of FuelEd (http://fueledschools.com), a startup that trains teachers in social and emotional competencies to improve student outcomes and teacher retention. Sarah Gaby earned her master’s degree in sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her paper topic was “Trading Politics for Protest: Youth Participation in Electoral Politics, Volunteering and Social Movement Activities from 1976-2009.” Rachel Macaulay earned a master’s in comparative literature from the University of Texas at Austin. She is a systems engineering/software engineering intern at the Aerospace Corp. Cindy Kaplan works for the production company Kids at Play, where she writes and produces comedy web series for Yahoo! and YouTube’s premium channels. Samantha Lakin and Ben Sacks ’10 were engaged in July 2012 after Samantha finished a year as a Fulbright scholar in Switzerland. Her research on the rescue of Jewish children into Switzerland during World War II has been recognized and presented internationally. Samantha is currently pursuing her MA in law and diplomacy at Tufts University’s Fletcher School. Ben completed Teach for America last year and continues to work as a high-school math teacher in Philadelphia.

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