The Palatniks

Lori Palatnik (born 1960) is an Orthodox Jewish outreach educator, blogger, author, and speaker. She is the founding director of the Jewish Women's Renaissance Project.

Palatnik was born into a Conservative Jewish family in Toronto, Canada. She majored in communications at the University of Windsor and earned a special degree in advertising. She began her career in radio copywriting.

In 1985 she was a participant on the first Jerusalem Fellowships trip to Israel, and her experience was so positive that she decided to take time off to learn more about Judaism. She studied for a year at the EYAHT and Neve Yerushalayim colleges for advanced Jewish learning in Jerusalem. She returned briefly to Toronto for a writing job for Aish HaTorah, and afterward returned to Israel, where she met her husband, Yaakov Palatnik, a native of Chicago. and became an Orthodox Jewish outreach educator, public speaker, and author. They have five children.

They were the founding rabbi and rebbetzin of Toronto's Village Shul, a family synagogue in Forest Hill, Toronto, which they led for 11 years. During that time, Lori also hosted The Jewish Journal, a Toronto television show.

The Palatniks next moved to Denver, Colorado, where for the next four years he worked with Aish Denver and she was educational and program director for the Aish-Ahavas Yisrael project. The couple also co-hosted a weekly Denver radio show called The Palatniks on 630-KHOW.

In 2005, the Palatniks relocated to Washington, D.C., where Rabbi Palatnik became executive director of Aish Washington, D.C. In 2008 Lori was one of eight founders of the Jewish Women's Renaissance Project, an outreach effort dubbed "Birthright for Women". As of 2016, JWRP has brought more than 10,000 women to Israel on a free, 8-day tour and learn program; participants only pay for their airfare. A 2010 poll of tour participants revealed that "76 per cent increased their attendance at Jewish services, 90.3 per cent increased their Jewish learning, and 75.4 per cent increased their observance of Shabbat" after participating in the tour.

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