Post­ed by Nao­mi Firestone-Teeter

Note: This post was orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten last week dur­ing the Jew­ish Federation’s Gen­er­al Assem­bly, a day after this one.

Two inspir­ing morn­ings in a row. NET­WORK author Mar­i­lyn Berg­er (This is a Soul) shared her sto­ry with a very lucky audi­ence this morn­ing at the GA. Prompt­ed by sto­ries about Dr. Rick Hodes, Mar­i­lyn trav­eled to Ethiopia sev­er­al years ago to learn more about the man who moved to Ethiopia in the ear­ly 90′s to help with Oper­a­tion Solomon, an oper­a­tion which helped Ethiopi­an Jews move to Israel, and nev­er left. Dr. Hodes has spent the past twen­ty years help­ing Jews and non-Jews alike through­out Ethiopia, Africa, and near­by regions. This is a Soul tells not only the sto­ry about this incred­i­ble man, a man recent­ly hon­ored by ABC as a Per­son of the Week” and a final­ist in 2007 for CNN Heroes”, but also Marilyn’s own sto­ry about trav­el­ing to Ethiopia and about a boy who changed her life.

An incred­i­ble book and an incred­i­ble sto­ry. Read more here.

Par­ents: Need an inspir­ing give­away for your child’s bar/​bat mitz­vah? This is it.

Orig­i­nal­ly from Lan­cast­er, Penn­syl­va­nia, Nao­mi is the CEO of Jew­ish Book Coun­cil. She grad­u­at­ed from Emory Uni­ver­si­ty with degrees in Eng­lish and Art His­to­ry and, in addi­tion, stud­ied at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don. Pri­or to her role as exec­u­tive direc­tor, Nao­mi served as the found­ing edi­tor of the JBC web­site and blog and man­ag­ing edi­tor of Jew­ish Book World. In addi­tion, she has over­seen JBC’s dig­i­tal ini­tia­tives, and also devel­oped the JBC’s Vis­it­ing Scribe series and Unpack­ing the Book: Jew­ish Writ­ers in Conversation.