Jul 22, 2009 -- A graduate of Yeshiva University’s (YU) Yeshiva College, Zev Eleff has been selected to receive the prestigious Wexner Foundation Graduate Study Fellowship this year. The fellowship program is open to aspiring Jewish leaders pursuing careers in Jewish education, the rabbinate, cantorate, and Jewish professional leadership. The Wexner Foundation introduced the program in 1988 to encourage the development of promising leaders in the North American Jewish community through graduate training, professional mentoring and specialized programming. Of the 20 exceptional candidates chosen for the prestigious Wexner Fellowship, seven are YU graduates. Including Eleff, they are Cynthia Bernstein, Rafael Cashman, Debra Glasberg, Marc Herman, Lea Aizenman, and Simcha Willig - each of whom will receive an annual stipend of $20,000. “I was very impressed by the many qualified applicants from Yeshiva University,” said Or Mars, director of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship/Davidson Scholars Program. “They each articulated special visions for the future of the Jewish world and demonstrated the potential to realize those visions. We are proud to have them in our program and feel confident that they will become masters of exercising leadership for the good of all.” Eleff, a resident of Silver Spring, MD, attended YU as part of the Schottenstein Honors Program and received his BA in history and Jewish Studies. While an undergraduate at YU, he served as Chair of the Honors Program; Editor-in-Chief of the YU Commentator, the official Yeshiva College student paper; and authored two books, Living from Convention to Convention: A History of the NCSY, 1954-1980 and Shirat Miriam. Eleff is currently enrolled at YU’s Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies and will be studying at Columbia University’s Teachers College in the fall. “I’d like to eventually pave inroads in scholarship on teaching and the history of Jewish education in America,” says Eleff, who credits YU for instilling him with a thirst for knowledge. “Both through my curricular and extracurricular experiences at YU, I have gained a tremendous appreciation for scholarship,” he added. “Mostly, however, Yeshiva has given me great hope that one can take the powers of the written word and education to create a meaningful experience for blazing a path for the Jewish future.”