LIMMUD FSU Recharge Presenters 2022
What is Limmud? What are the Principles? Also, learn some of our History and more.
Natalia Tsvibel Jewish educator, Founder of Yom Rishon School
Natalia is the founder and director of Yom Rishon School in Palo Alto. Since 2014, this unique and innovative program has offered in-person and remote learning programs on Judaism, Jewish tradition and Israeli culture for Russian-speaking Jewish families in the Bay Area. Yom Rishon School has helped 100s of families build Jewish homes, prepare children for their Bar/Bat mitzvahs, and lay the foundations for engaged Jewish home life. Natalia's led theatrical performances and major celebrations of Purim, Pesach, Rosh-ha-Shannah, Yom ha-Atzmaut and Hanukkah, well-known and well-received events in the Bay Area Russian-Jewish community.
Natalia began her career teaching Jewish tradition and Hebrew language just after graduating high school, in the first Jewish school in Petrozavodsk. She then moved to Israel to pursue a degree in Social Work and Art History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After completing her academic work there, Natalia worked across a range of social programs in Israel, helping olim to integrate into their new home. She regularly travelled to the Former Soviet Union to work at Jewish summer camps, sponsored by the Jewish Agency. In 2000 Natalia relocated to the US, where she led a wide variety of Russian-language Jewish programming in local synagogues. Based on her experience working as Director of the Russian Cultural Department of Palo Alto JCC, she saw the opportunity for independent versions of her programs and founded Yom Rishon School.
In 2019 Natalia started a cycle of lectures on Biblical Characters in World Art to bring together her passions for teaching Jewish History and Art. As the curriculum she developed became even more popular with the onset of the 2020 pandemic, her lectures have been featured in a range of online Art forums across the US and Europe.