May 2, 2022
Jerusalem College of Technology President professor Chaim Sukenik toured the United States from March 9 to March 30 to raise awareness surrounding the college’s mission and major initiatives, including its international program in English and the future Tal Campus for Women.
Sukenik’s nationwide tour comes as JCT continues to build momentum toward the construction of the new Tal Campus, for which the college is slated to break ground this year, according to a news release. The campus will be the permanent home for up to 3,000 of JCT’s women students in nursing, computer science, electro-optics, industrial engineering, accounting and management.
The campus will provide increased opportunities for national religious, haredi and Ethiopian women to pursue higher education and attain quality employment in scientific and high-tech industries, the release stated. Notably, 53 percent of all JCT’s computer science students are women, which is 18% higher than any other Israeli academic institution.
Sukenik was in the Cleveland area March 23 and March 24, home of Tal Campus campaign honorary chairs Morry and Judy Weiss. Morry Weiss is the former chairman of American Greetings, the world’s second-largest greeting card producer.
“Morry and Judy Weiss have been extraordinarily helpful and gracious in enabling JCT to cultivate new contacts in the Cleveland area and beyond,” Sukenik said in the release.
Sukenik and his family lived in Cleveland from 1977 to 1995, when he was a faculty member at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, before making aliyah.
In more recent years, the growth of Cleveland’s Orthodox community “has been explosive,” Sukenik said in the release, citing factors such as affordable housing and access to school vouchers as factors driving that growth.
As part of the visit, Sukenik got to tour the new campus of the Hebrew Academy of Cleveland in Cleveland Heights, where his children had studied. He also met with Rabbi Binyamin Blau, leader of both Green Road Synagogue and Fuchs Mizrachi School, both in Beachwood. Avi Soclof, a Fuchs Mizrachi graduate, is a student in the JCT international program and he won first prize in the JCT men’s hackathon (technology marathon) by co-creating a search engine for an Israeli NGO that captures the stories of Jews who came to Israel pre-1948.
