YCHW Saskatoon Book Project

NEW! - Leila Hesselson, Special Correspondent to The Canadian Jewish News - read Leila's article.

Welcome Message - Leila Hesselson

I recently finished a professional internship program in Israel called Career Israel, sponsored by MASA and the Jewish Agency. I worked in a Genetics lab at Tel Aviv University whose focus is to understand the molecular basis of hearlng loss in Israeli populations. In addition, I met Jewish people from all around the globe, including South America, France and South Africa. I enjoyed spending Shabbat dinners with the people from my program, participating in dialogue seminars and traveling to different parts of Israel. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my experience meeting 100 Jewish people from all around the world. In addition, as a lifetime member of Canadian Hadassah-WIZO (CHW), I had the opportunity to spend a few days with the CHW mission to Israel in April 2009.

Being a Jewish person from a remote location, Battleford, Saskatchewan, I am curious to learn about other Jewish populations found in remote and distant places including Croatia, India and Latvia. I am keen to find out more about their way of life and how they kindle their Jewish spirit and heritage in today's modern and diverse society. Furthermore, as a keen traveller myself, I am interested in hearing stories about Jewish travellers who have connected with other Jewish travellers in remote or distant pockets of the world, such as on backpacking adventures in South America or trekking expeditions in Nepal.

Through a YCHW Saskatoon initiative, I am collecting stories so that they may be used in a published book in order to fundraise for CHW projects and programs. I look forward to your participation and I am very excited to read your stories. Please read the submission guidelines carefully before submitting your work via e-mail to submissions@chw.ca

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly by e-mail at leila.hesselson@mail.mcgill.ca

Thank you for your participation.

Sincerely,
Leila Hesselson
YCHW Saskatoon