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Shabbat Mishpatim, led by Rabbi Anne Feibelman and Cantor Adina Sharfstein

We recently had the privilege of hosting Ambassador Michael Oren for a private breakfast meeting at Ocean Reef, an event that brought together esteemed members of our community for an insightful dialogue on matters of significant importance. While it was initially not our intention to record this gathering, the depth and relevance of the conversation compelled us to capture and share these moments. Recognizing the exceptional nature of the discussion and its potential value to a broader audience, we have decided to make the recording available to the public. We wish to extend our sincerest apologies for the quality of the recording. In the spirit of spontaneity and due to the unplanned nature of this decision, the session was captured on an iPhone by a gracious attendee rather than through our standard professional recording practices. As a result, you may notice some movement and variations in the audiovisual quality, for which we ask for your understanding. Despite these imperfections, the content's significance far outweighs these technical limitations. Ambassador Oren's insights and the contributions of Ocean Reef members during this meeting offer invaluable perspectives on issues that resonate with us all. We hope you find this recording as enlightening and thought-provoking as we did. It serves as a testament to the vibrant intellectual community that Ocean Reef prides itself on being. Thank you for your understanding and continued support.

Ambassador Michael Oren spoke on Israel, US relations and the future at a community-wide event at the Ocean Reef Chapel and Fellowship Center event. Born in New York, educated at Princeton and Columbia, and has held professorships at Harvard, Yale, and Georgetown. Ambassador Oren’s academic accolades include fellowships from the US State Department and the British and Canadian governments. He received four honorary doctorates and holds four degrees in Middle East history. Serving as a lone soldier in the paratroopers, he fought in the 1982 Lebanon War and later held the role of army spokesman, achieving the rank of major. His diplomatic career is marked by pivotal roles, including advisor to Israel’s delegation to the UN, former Foreign Minister Abba Evan, and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Notably, in 2009, Michael was appointed Israel’s ambassador to the United States, a role in which he interacted with major American institutions over strategic issues like the Iron Dome defense system and the Iran nuclear threat. Oren's tenure in politics continued with his election to the Knesset, where he served as Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office, overseeing diplomacy. His international influence has been recognized by Politico, the Forward, and the Jerusalem Post, ranking him among the most influential thinkers in both America and worldwide.

Rabbi Micah Greenstein has served Temple Israel, Memphis’ historic 170-year-old congregation, for over three decades, sustaining its position as the largest synagogue in Tennessee and the Deep South. He is a two-time past President of the Memphis Ministers Association which was instrumental in ending the sanitation strike in the aftermath of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968. Rabbi Greenstein was named among America’s Top 50 Rabbis in 2012 and 2013 by Newsweek/The Daily Beast and, in 2019, among the "Top 40 Change Makers for Memphis." Since the 1990s, Greenstein has published on Southern Rabbis and Black Civil Rights and has facilitated interfaith dialogue with national and international delegations visiting Memphis. Greenstein is co-author of “What Do Our Neighbors Believe? Questions and Answers on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (2019, Westminster John Knox Press). Greenstein was the first rabbi to preach at the Washington National Cathedral on a Major State Day in 2005 and the only rabbi to preach for 25 years in the renowned annual Calvary Episcopal Lenten Preaching Series. Reflecting Temple Israel’s commitment to serving the greater community, Greenstein was recognized as Memphis Magazine’s first “Memphian of the Year” in 2013. He has served on the national boards of the NAACP, the National Civil Rights Museum, and the Central Conference of American Rabbis, for which Rabbi Greenstein chaired the Israel Committee. Greenstein mentors Israeli Reform Rabbis, including the 2020 establishment of the first non-Orthodox synagogue in Shoham, a suburb of Tel Aviv. Prior to rabbinical school, Rabbi Greenstein was named a Kennedy Fellow at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and earned a Master's degree in Public Administration. He graduated from Cornell University in Economics as a Cornell National Scholar and was ordained at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in Cincinnati after completing his Masters of Arts in Hebrew Letters at HUC-JIR in Los Angeles. Rabbi Greenstein has served on the faculty at the Memphis Theological Protestant Seminary and presently teaches at Rhodes College.

Kenneth Wollack is chairman of the National Endowment for Democracy and a George W. Bush Institute’s Advisory Council member. Mr. Wollack served as co-chair of the Commission on Presidential Debates for the presidential and vice presidential debates during the lead-up to the 2020 election. Mr. Wollack has been actively involved in foreign affairs, journalism, and politics over the past five decades. For more than 25 years, he served as president of the National Democratic Institute (NDI), a nongovernmental organization dedicated to advancing democracy worldwide. He retired in September 2018 after 32 years at the Institute. He has testified before congressional committees, appeared on national television and radio, and spoken before world affairs councils nationwide. He has served on task forces sponsored by the Brookings Institution, the United States Institute of Peace, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Center for U.S. Global Engagement, the Bipartisan Policy Center, and the Atlantic Council. He was chairman of the U.S. Committee for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), served on the Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on Democracy Promotion, and was a member of the advisory committee for the U.S. Agency for International Development and a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He also co-chaired the Ronald Reagan Institute’s bi-partisan Working Group on advancing freedom and promoting democracy in the 21st century. For his efforts on behalf of democracy, Mr. Wollack was the recipient of NDI’s W. Averell Harriman Democracy Award, the Presidential Order of Excellence as well as Honorary Citizenship from the Republic of Georgia, the National Order “Faithful Service” from the government of Romania, and the Medal of Honor “Lithuanian Millennium Star” from the government of Lithuania. The views expressed by Mr. Wollack are not necessarily the opinions of Congregation Ocean Reef, but in a fair and balanced manner, we strive to allow all parties to voice their opinions in a balanced and impartial way.

Congregation Ocean Reef Celebrates the 1st Night of Hannukah and Shabbat Services.

Cantor Becky Mann leads a beautiful, musically inspired service.

Congregation Ocean Reef cultivates a Jewish community of purposeful belonging. The Foundational Principals of Judaism are the Worship of G-d, the Study of the Torah, and Tikkun Olam. We aim to inspire and support spiritual journeys by deepening relationships with one another. We aim to create a vibrant, inclusive spiritual community at Ocean Reef.