The Great Pyramids of Egypt
The Golden Dome of Jerusalem
The Treasury in Petra, Jordan
Interfaith Tour of Israel, Egypt and Jordan
SOLD OUT!!
Please contact us to put your name on the waiting list
February 12-26, 2023
Imagine the incredible magic of seeing the Pyramids, Sphinx and Library of Alexandria in Egypt; the Golden Dome, the Bahai Temple Gardens, Western Wall and Masada in Israel; and Mt. Nebo and the phenomenal majesty of Petra in Jordan. Add to this meeting dignitaries such as the Coptic Christian Pope, Egyptian Minister of Immigration and Diaspora and the lead archeologist of Egypt.
Now imagine being part of a wonderfully diverse interfaith group led by Rabbi Steve Einstein, Rev. James Pike and renowned educator Essraa Nawar. Yes, this is the unique and unparalleled experience of the Interfaith Tour of Egypt, Jordan and Israel in February 2023! Please register now before the trip sells out.
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All appropriate and legal health procedures will be followed.
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Shalom. Salaam. Peace. We Are One.
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For more information, call (949) 677-6728​
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Click below to download relevant files.
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Rabbi Stephen J. Einstein
Stephen J. Einstein was born and reared in Southern California, and is a cum laude-Phi Beta Kappa graduate
of UCLA. He was ordained at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, where he also earned his
doctorate. Mentor to many rabbinical students, in recognition of his years of service, the College-Institute also
awarded him an honorary doctorate.
Rabbi Einstein served congregations in Parsippany, New Jersey and Westminster, California, prior to founding
Congregation B’nai Tzedek, Fountain Valley, California in 1976. He remained the synagogue’s rabbi until his
retirement in 2012. He is now Founding Rabbi Emeritus.
Rabbi Einstein was Vice President of Member Services of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, having
previously served as Chair of the Conference’s Ethics Committee. He is Past President of the Pacific Association of Reform Rabbis, the Orange County Board of Rabbis, and the Orange County Bureau of Jewish Education. He is currently on the Board of CSP (Community Scholar Program).
He taught Orange County’s Community-wide Introduction to Judaism class from 1976-2017. He is co-editor of Introduction to Judaism: A Sourcebook, which was used in basic Judaism courses throughout North America for over three decades. He is also co-author of Every Person’s Guide to Judaism. He served as Co-chair of Reform Judaism’s Commission on Outreach, Membership, and Sacred Community, and currently is Co-Chair of the Sandra Caplan Community Bet Din of Southern California.. Dr. Einstein has taught at California State University, Fullerton in the Department of Comparative Religion.
Active in interfaith affairs, he is Past President of the Greater Huntington Beach Interfaith Council, served on the Interfaith Advisory Committee of the Alzheimer’s Association, and is an active member of the Catholic-Jewish Dialogue. He is on the Executive Board of CLUE (Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice) and is a volunteer Chaplain for the Fountain Valley Police Department. For three years, he served as Chair of the Governing Board of Fountain Valley Regional Hospital. A prior School Board member, he was a member of the Personnel Commission of the Fountain Valley School District from 1990-2017. Rabbi Einstein is listed in Who’s Who in America.
Rabbi Einstein and his wife Robin are the proud parents of four children and seven grandchildren.
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Essraa Nawar, MBA, MA, MLIS
Essraa Nawar received her Bachelor’s degree in commerce with an emphasis in accounting from Alexandria
University, Egypt (2002). She also holds an MBA from the American Management & Business Administration
Institute, Cambridge, MA (2005), a Master of Arts in Organizational Leadership (MAOL) from Brandman
University (2015), California AND a Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) at San Jose State
University, California (2017). She plans to pursue her Ph.D. in educational leadership.
Essraa Nawar has been the Development Librarian - Head of Library Development and Marketing and the
Chair of the Arts, Exhibits and Events Committee at the Leathery Libraries at Chapman University, California,
since 2009 where she helped raise over 5 million dollars in support of the Libraries at Chapman University.
She co-curated the exhibits “Empowering Muslim Women”, “Egypt the Revolution Continues” and a “ A Country
called Syria”. Over the years Essraa has studied, lived and worked in many places, including the Gulf area
(Qatar), Washington D.C., where she worked for The Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, and Alexandria, Egypt
where she worked for Bibliotheca Alexandrina. In 2009, she moved with her husband and family to Orange
County, California in 2009.
Essraa speaks and holds workshops all over the world whether in the United States, Europe or the middle east on topics of librarianship, the importance of exhibits and programs in academic libraries and how to use them as an educational tool, how libraries can be a hub for diversity , pairing fundraising with diversity efforts as well as successful fundraising models for academic libraries. She is also passionate about interfaith relationships and the power of living in a diverse world. She wrote a piece titled “Organic versus staged diversity” that appeared in 2019.
In June 2019, she spoke to the MELCom International, the European Association of Middle East Librarians about her joinery as an “Accidental Middle East librarian” In Naples, Italy, and in October 2019 at the University of Austin, Texas where she held a workshop about diversity in academic libraries.
Nawar has been the recipient of several awards and grants from the American Library Association, the International Federation of libraries, Chapman University and San Jose State University over the last few years. She was recently appointed as an IFLA (International Federation of library associations) fellow and she also represented the American Library Association in Sharjah in November 2016. Essraa Nawar was also recognized as ACRL member of the week in July 2017. In May 2017, the College of Applied Sciences and Arts at San Jose State University named her the recipient of the Ken Haycock Award for Exceptional Professional Promise where she was honored by being the Outstanding Student speaker at the May 2017 convocation. http://ischoolconvocation.sjsu.edu/2017/speaker/student-speaker-1
In July 2017, Essraa has received an invitation from the Egyptian Government to participate in this conference that took place in Cairo from the 2nd to the 3rd of July 2017. This conference came under the sponsorship of the Egyptian President H.E. Abdelfattah El-Sisi. The Ministry of State for Emigration & Egyptian Expatriates’ Affairs and the National Council for Women have included Essraa due to her strong academic and professional achievements. She was able to showcase the strength, power, and resilience of female Egyptian expatriates. In addition, she was honored as one of the top 30 Egyptian women abroad. Since then, Essraa has been working closely with the Ministry of State for Emigration & Egyptian Expatriates’ Affairs and the National Council for Women on initiatives that will benefit the Egyptian economy, tourism, interfaith understanding and status of women.
In March 2018, Nawar was selected by the Orange County Interfaith Network and the house of worship tour to be one of the leaders of an interfaith trip going to the middle east.
Her professional interests include developing and implementing marketing, branding, and communications and fundraising practices to support academic Libraries as well as maintaining an integrated external relations model targeting prospective donors, current donors, board members and external partners.
Essraa is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post, the Orange County Register and several other magazines and blogs where she shares her story as a Muslim Women living in American and is also trying to bridge cultural misunderstandings between Arabs, Muslims and Americans through her artwork. Essraa was also recently appointed to join as a Women Leader in the Internet Marketing Association. She is very passionate about and active in the topics of diversity, cultural and religious intelligence, interfaith dialogue and empowering Muslim Women. She thrives best in diverse environments and believes in the power of humanity. She thinks that we all have the power to change the world one person at a time. In addition to her agile and full regional speaking engagements, she recently took her diversity message to the international stage where she spoke at a TED conference at the Technical University of Munich on how to feel welcomed and empowered in a diverse world. Her talk (only live for a few months) has been viewed and shared more than 6000 times and have since been sharing her message through public speaking, radio and TV interviews, podcasts in numerous venues and much more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myl722kHxbU
In her free time, Essraa enjoys reading, listening to music, traveling spending time with her husband who she calls her best friend and soul mate, watching her boys as they perform gymnastics and diving, in which they excel and are both part of the USA National team as well as spending time with her 10 years old girl who is a gymnast and a ballerina.
Essraa is very active on all social media platforms and uses the hashtag #changethenarrative to change how the world views Muslim women and break barriers.
Website: http://essraanawar.com/
Facebook/Twitter/Instagram Handle: @essraanawar
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Reverend James Pike
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James Pike is the pastor of Lutheran Church of the Resurrection in Huntington Beach, where he lives with his
wife and four children. In addition to his own travels, Rev. Pike has led groups on tours of the Baltics and Russia,
France and Italy, and most recently Japan. In addition to his church work, Rev. Pike teaches improvisational
comedy at the Academy for the Performing Arts at Huntington Beach High School, after spending almost a
decade performing in Los Angeles and Hollywood. He was also the outgoing board chair of a large southern
California non-profit (OPARC) that helps developmentally disabled adults reach their full potential.