ToLife, To Love Gala Event
Wednesday, June 1, 2022 • 2 Sivan 5782
6:30 PM - 8:30 PMATJCWE ARE SORRY ONLINE RESERVATIONS ARE NOW CLOSED.
PLEASE CALL THE OFFICE FOR AVAILABILITY. (305) 937-1880
Rabbi Guido Cohen, Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center Rabbi and Panelist
Rabbi Cohen joined as a full member of our clergy team in 2017. He has a wide array of responsibilities ranging from youth and adult education, pastoral care, ritual, outreach and engagement.
Rabbi Cohen’s draws on an eclectic alchemy of hasidic and neo-hasidic thinkers in his approach to Judaism, along with influences of Heschel, Kaplan, Buber, and Gillman. He views rabbinic leadership as an educational and spiritual service, and that Jewish communities are the sacred space in which Judaism becomes meaningful and inspiring. “For me, being a rabbi is leading such sacred space through teaching Torah and motivating others to find relevant meaning in our ancient wisdom that encourages us to fix our lives and our world,” he said.
Rabbi Cohen was born in Buenos Aires, where the strong influence of his grandparents drew him to Judaism from a young age. Rabbi Cohen served as the senior rabbi of the Asociacion Israelita Montefiore, a Conservative/Masorti congregation in Bogota, Colombia. He previously served as rabbi and director of Jewish Studies at the Colegio Tarbut in Buenos Aires, a Jewish day school of more than 1,500 students, and was the assistant rabbi at the Libertad Street Synagogue in Buenos Aires. Rabbi Cohen was ordained from the Seminario Rabinico Latino Americano, the Conservative Movement’s Latin American Rabbinical School, and is also a graduate of the Universidad de Buenos Aires School of Law.
Rabbi Cohen enjoys traveling, watching movies, and reading. He is married to Dafne and together they are raising three children, Tobías, Amós and Eden.
Archie Gottesman, Guest Panelist
Archie Gottesman is the co-founder of JewBelong.com, a groundbreaking organization and web-based platform focused on rebranding Judaism to make it more warm, relevant and welcoming for all, no matter where they are on their Jewish journey! Using slogans like: “We’re just 75 years since the gas chambers. So no, a billboard calling out Jew hate isn’t an overreaction,” on billboards in Times Square and across the country, JewBelong also focuses on ending the growing antisemitism in the US. For almost thirty years, Archie was the voice behind Manhattan Mini Storage’s iconic branding.
Eli Beer- Founder, Guest Panelist
Eli Beer is a social entrepreneur and the President and Founder of United Hatzalah of Israel. After witnessing a bus bombing in Jerusalem as he was walking home from school at the age of six, Eli was inspired by this traumatic experience to pursue a career that would allow him to save lives. Eli became a certified EMT at 15 and began volunteering on an ambulance in order to follow his life’s mission. What he found, though, was that when someone needed fast medical attention, unfortunately, the ambulance was unable to arrive in time due to traffic, congestion, and the distance from which the ambulance was dispatched.
Eli sought out to fix this widespread and urgent problem. Although just a teenager, Beer gathered a group of like-minded EMTs with a passion for saving lives to listen to police scanners and rush to the scene when medical help was needed in their neighborhood. The initiative eventually became Hatzalah (meaning rescue in Hebrew). In 2006 Eli changed the name of the organization to United Hatzalah to represent the partnership of Jewish, Muslim, Druze and Christian volunteers from all religious spectrums working together in order to save lives.
United Hatzalah has become so successful, as it has been at the forefront of medical innovation. Its fleet of vehicles, including the Ambucycle, a motorcycle that has all the medical equipment of an ambulance aside from a stretcher, allows the EMT to reach the patient on average of 90 seconds in Jerusalem, and 3 minutes across Israel. In 2006, Beer invented “Moskowitz Life Compass,” which is the most advanced location technology, able to locate the five closest EMS responders within 3 seconds of the emergency.
In over twenty-five years, the organization has grown to more than 6,000 volunteers who unite together to save lives, regardless of race or religion. This communal EMS network treats over 300,000 people per year, in Israel, as they waited for ambulances and medical attention.
Eli’s vision is to bring this life saving model across the world. In 2015, Beer expanded internationally with the establishment of branches in South America and other countries, including “United Rescue” in Jersey City, USA, where the response time was reduced to just two minutes and thirty-five seconds.
In addition to his work at United Hatzalah, Eli is also President of Misada Capital, a U.S. hedge fund focused on publicly traded American restaurant chains.
For his tireless work, Eli has received various recognitions and awards. This includes being named as Social Entrepreneur of the Year in Israel by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship in 2010, receiving the Israel President Prize by President Shimon Peres for innovation and volunteering in 2011, becoming a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader in 2012 selected by Queen Rania of Jordan, and being awarded the Victor J. Goldberg IIE Prize for Peace in the Middle East in 2013.
When Eli is not traveling around the world fundraising for United Hatzalah, he lives in Jerusalem, Israel, with his wife, Gitty, and five children, some of who are also EMT volunteers.
Michael Putney, Moderator
Michael Putney has been the senior political reporter to Local 10 since 1989 and host of "This Week In South Florida with Michael Putney." He is Local 10's senior reporter on politics and government, and writes a semimonthly column on politics for The Miami Herald. Michael began his career in broadcast journalism in 1966, and has previously worked at KCGM and KFRU in Missouri; The Columbia Daily Tribune; The National Observer in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles; and The Time Inc. in New York. At WTVJ in Miami, he reported on a wide variety of stories but with a heavy emphasis on government and politics. In 1986, he became weekend co-anchor. By the late '80s, Michael Putney had achieved "most valuable reporter" status in the South Florida broadcast community.
Michael was born in New York City, spent his early years in St. Louis, and when he was 14 years old, he moved with his family to Berkeley, California. After graduation from Berkeley High School, he attended Deep Springs College in California. After two years, he entered the University of Missouri and received a bachelor of arts in English literature. He later completed course work toward a master's degree at the University of Missouri.
Michael has been to Cuba more than a dozen times. His knowledge of and experience with Cuban political issues is virtually unmatched among South Florida news professionals. The myriad of stories he has covered includes the Mariel boatlifts; Immigration Accord talks in Havana, Washington and New York; and an in-depth interview with Cuban National Assembly President, Ricardo Alarcon. Michael reported from Havana when the remains of Che Guevara were returned to the island from Bolivia. He was part of the Local 10 News team that covered the visit of Pope John Paul II to Cuba.
Michael's superior reporting skills have won him two Emmys. The state Supreme Court also appointed him to the Florida's Judicial Management Council.
Michael enjoys spending time with his daughter, Mia and recently married attorney, Karen Evans-Putney. He also enjoys cooking, reading, tennis and traveling.
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