Zohar Atkins, Brown University Class of 2010, is working toward a concurrent four-year master’s and bachelor’s degree – his A.M. in History and his A.B. in Classics and Judaic Studies.  Elected to Phi Beta Kappa as a junior, Zohar is writing an undergraduate honors thesis on love, death, and justice in the thought of Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Heidegger, and Emmanuel Levinas.  This past year Zohar was invited by Brown’s Cogut Center for the Humanities to be an undergraduate fellow, an active participant in a weekly seminar with leading faculty, post-doctoral candidates, and graduate students.  At Brown, Zohar also serves as a Presidential Host, a Meiklejohn Peer Advisor,  a poetry teacher at the Rhode Island Adult Correctional Facility, the Editor of Machberet (a Jewish studies journal), and a Trustee and chavurah coordinator at Brown-RISD Hillel.  His essays have been published in the university’s Classics, Religious Studies, and History journals.  For his essay, “The Duty of Cock-Eyed Angels,” Zohar recently won first place in the Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics Competition.  Zohar performs with the “spoken word” group on campus and plays intramural soccer and squash.  This summer, he is working with a Brown literature professor on the redesign of a course, “The Idea of Self.”  After graduation, Zohar hopes to pursue both a doctorate and rabbinic ordination.  His ultimate goals are to make God manifest in the world, to inspire others, and to act with commitment, openness, and love.  Before Brown, Zohar attended Montclair High School, in Montclair, New Jersey, during which time he also participated in the Bronfman Youth Fellowship in Israel.