Lyana Rotstein is an amazing warrior, educator, tour guide, and mother of four children serving either in the military or in the community. Join us for brunch as Lyana is in conversation with Wendy Polins, updates us on Israel’s war against Hamas, how it has impacted her family, community and Israeli society. She will inspire us with stories of bravery and the many volunteer efforts of Israeli civil society and the military and share first hand accounts of this difficult time.
Lyana Rotstein is a creative and articulate public speaker and educator, as well as an expert in the history of the Jewish People from the time of the Bible through today. She has guided a wide variety of global leaders, congresspeople and senators, led community and national leadership missions, and stewarded political, interfaith and intergenerational groups through Israel.
Wendy Dubow Polins grew up in Montreal in a Zionistic family and attended Jewish day school. During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, her father, an orthopedic surgeon, volunteered to join the IDF and operated on Israeli soldiers as well as Arab POW’s. Her maternal grandfather was chairman of the United Palestine Appeal of Montreal and her mother was one of the founders of the Soviet Jewry Movement in Canada and brought Avital Sharansky to North America for the first time to speak to Congress on behalf of her husband Natan Sharansky who was imprisoned.
These and other events led Wendy’s family to make Aliyah to Israel in 1977, where they lived in Rehovot for Wendy’s high school years. Wendy later returned to the US to attend Barnard College and then Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture.
Wendy is a passionate member of the Boston Jewish community, and has been involved in a multitude of Israeli organizations. She has held leadership positions with the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, Our Generation Speaks, and Combined Jewish Philanthropies among others.
Wendy is an architect, interior designer, novelist, and a professor of art at Salem State College. She lives on the North Shore and in the Berkshires with her husband Richard and they have two grown daughters and a son-in-law who live in New York City.