David Siegel, Israel’s Consul General for the Southwestern United States, and Mitchell Landsberg, Deputy Foreign and National Editor of the Los Angeles Times, will be keynote speakers at the JSPA’s Third Annual Conference and Shabbaton, to be held Feb. 25 – 28 in Los Angeles.

Consul General Siegel has represented the Israeli government in Los Angeles since 2011, connecting Israeli technology with companies and local governments in California, Nevada, Arizona and elsewhere while also representing Israel in news and other public forums through several wars and during the political battles over the nuclear deal between the U.S. and Iran.   Among his achievements are the signing of a multi-year technology agreement between Israel and California to supply expertise in countering the effects of West Coast drought.

Earlier he served as Chief of Staff to Israel’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and as Chief of Staff to three of Israel’s Ambassadors to the United States. He also was Israel’s voice to the Washington press corps and liaison to the U.S. Congress, where he was responsible for security cooperation, missile defense and homeland security. In these capacities, Mr. Siegel participated in the 1998 Wye River Peace Summit, the 1999 Israel-Syria negotiations, and the Camp David Middle East Peace Summit in the Fall of 2000.

He holds a Masters Degree in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Boston, and served as a Commander in the Israel Defense Forces.

Mitchell Landsberg, a co-winner of the Pulitzer Prize, is the Deputy Foreign and National Editor for the Los Angeles Times, helping to supervise and edit the Times’ global network of correspondents.  Previously, he was an Assistant Foreign Editor for several years, and a reporter on theTimes’ Metro Desk.

As a reporter, Mr. Landsberg covered the 2008 presidential campaign,with a particular focus on the role of religion in the race, and has reported for the Times from China, the Middle East and Haiti, among other places.he covered education and religion among many other topics. In 2004 he was part of a team that wrote a series of investigative articles about the troubled King Drew Medical Center, for which the paper won a 2005 Pulitzer Prize. He was also a lead writer on  stories about the Southern California wildfires in 2003, for which the Times’ Metro staff was awarded a 2004 Pulitzer.

Before coming to the Times, Mr. Landsberg spent 19 years with The Associated Press, most of it at the AP’s New York headquarters as a writer and editor, including several years as a roving national correspondent. His last two-and-a-half years with the AP were spent in the Moscow bureau, covering the uncertain progress of the former Soviet Union toward democracy and a market economy.

A native of Sacramento, Mr. Landsberg is a graduate of UCLA.

Other speakers at this year’s conference include:

~ Jennifer Medina, national correspondent for the New York Times

~ Joseph Lipner, leading intellectual property attorney, who will give a workshop on press freedom in private high schools

~ Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky of Bnai David-Judea Congregation, who will reprise his ground-breaking analysis of journalism and the laws of lashon harah (gossip)

~ Rob Eshman, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, who will discuss coverage of the Iran nuclear agreement

~ Kathleen Neumeyer, Emeritus Head of Upper School Communications, Harvard-Westlake School

~ Jacob Ellenhorn, USC Student Senator, who will talk about Israel and Jewish issues in college media

… and many more.

The JSPA works to improve Jewish high school papers and websites, enhance journalism education in Jewish schools, add Jewish content and sensibility to our publications, and promote these goals in a way that respects the Jewish calendar — in particular, using Shabbat to create a journalistic cohort for our students while creating a space to consider newsgathering in a Jewish way.  It also hosts students from public and secular private schools and is open to all.

For more information, please contact Joelle Keene at [email protected]. The deadline for registration Feb. 15.   Conference registration and contest information are attached.

To register for the conference, please click here.