Aya Baron Receives Wexner Fellowship for Rabbinical Studies
MA student joins two GTU alumni as recent recipients of the fellowship
Congratulations to GTU student Aya Baron, who has been awarded a prestigious Wexner Graduate Fellowship to pursue rabbinical studies at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote, Pennsylvania. Baron is currently earning her MA in Jewish Studies at the GTU in association with our Richard S. Dinner Center for Jewish Studies. Baron’s MA thesis uses feminist and folklorist analysis to highlight the role of women as central figures in the production of rabbinic narrative and in Jewish collective memory. Her current studies at the GTU follow six years of leadership experience at Wilderness Torah, a Berkeley-based center for earth-based Judaism confounded and directed by GTU alumnus Rabbi Zelig Golden (MA, ’17).
Aya Baron is the third student from the GTU’s MA program in Jewish Studies to receive a Wexner Fellowship in recent years. Zelig Golden was a Wexner Fellow during his MA work at the GTU. Joey Glick (MA, '16), a former Berkeley-Jerusalem Fellow at the GTU, received the Wexner Fellowship to pursue his rabbinical studies at Hebrew College. The fellowship was established in 1988 by the Wexner Foundation to support outstanding rabbinical students and graduate students in Jewish education and Jewish communal service programs.