Nader Abdallah is a translator living in Jerusalem.

David Abernethy practices law in the Philadelphia area and is a member of the Beth Am Israel community in Penn Valley, Pennsylvania.

Rabbi Steven Abraham is the Rabbi of Beth El Synagogue in Omaha, Nebraska. Rabbi Abraham graduated from the rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary in May of 2011, where he also received a Masters of Arts in Jewish Education. Before attending JTS, the rabbi graduated from the University of Baltimore with a degree in Business Management. While in rabbinical school, Rabbi Abraham served as an intern at Congregation Beth Shalom in Chicago, as well as at Congregation Habonim in New York. For years, he was actively involved with USY, from his time as a participant in high school, to his service as a group leader for numerous summer programs, and in his current position as director of USY on Wheels.

Dr. Thabet Abu Rass (or Abu Ras; Arabic: الدكتور ثابت ابو راس, Hebrew: ד״ר ת׳אבת אבו-ראס) is a political geographer and lecturer at Sapir College. In his last position, he directed the Negev branch of Adalah - the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, and in this framework dealt with promoting the rights of the Arab-Bedouins in the Negev. In addition, Abu Rass has served as co-chairman of the Hand in Hand Association for Jewish-Arab Education in Israel and has served as Director of the Shatil Branch in the Negev and as the Director of the Abu Basma Project of the New Israel Fund and the Joint Distribution Committee .

Rasheed Agbaria is a Haifa-based writer, translator, and software engineer. His three published works, so far, are הזר ברחוב צהיון (סיפורת), חלום ליל פחד, and שירה לא תזרח השמש, רומן. He is also the author of the "10 Commandments of Rasheed Aqbaria" (on Facebook).

Rabbi Sanford Akselrad (1957- ) is the spiritual leader of Congregation Ner Tamid in Las Vegas, Nevada, a position he has held since 1988. Rabbi Akselrad moved to Las Vegas for the job and has been a leader in the local Jewish community ever since. He started Project Ezra during the recession to help Jewish community members find jobs, and established the NextGen program to bring young adults in their twenties and thirties back to the temple. For over twenty years Rabbi Akselrad was a member of the board of the Nevada Governor’s Council on Holocaust education, a topic that was the focus of his rabbinical thesis. He was the founding president of the Clark County Board of Rabbis and has served on the boards of the Jewish Federation of Las Vegas, Jewish Family Services, and the Humana Hospital Pastoral Advisory Board. He was also the chair of the Federation’s Community Relations Council (CRC). Rabbi Akselrad is a board member of the Anti-Defamation League Nevada region office and the Interfaith Council of Southern Nevada.

Rabbi David L. Algaze, originally of Buenos Aires, Argentina, is the founder and spiritual leader of Ḥavurat Yisrael, Forest Hills, New York. He received his smikhah from Rabbi Joseph Messas, Chief Rabbi of Haifa, Israel, and from Rabbi Ezra Basry, head of the Bet-Din of Jerusalem. Rabbi Algaze founded Eli, a city in Samaria, in 1984. In 1989 he founded The Coalition for Israel. He has been Rosh Yeshivah of Ohr Torah Institute and a delegate of the Soviet Union. A graduate of the University of Buenos Aires, he holds a Master of Philosophy degree from Columbia University and a Master of Hebrew Literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary. The Rabbi has been a Fellow of the Herbert Lehman Institute of Ethics, a Columbia University President's Fellow, and a Kent Fellow of the Danfourth Foundation. A sepharadi rabbi, his forefathers include the Maharit, Rabbi Yomtov Algaze, who was Rishon Letzion, chief rabbi of the ancient Jewish community of Eretz Yisrael, and Rabbi Shlomo Algaze, the chief rabbi who excommunicated Shabbetai Tzvi.

Rabbi Katy Z. Allen is the founder and spiritual leader of Ma'yan Tikvah - A Wellspring of Hope, a non-traditional congregation that holds services outdoors all year. She began her career as a biology teacher, turned to writing and editing educational materials, then started teaching Hebrew school and became involved in family and adult education before entering rabbinical school. She received a Masters of Arts in Jewish Studies from Hebrew College in Newton, MA, in 1999, and rabbinic ordination from the Academy for Jewish Religion in Yonkers, NY, in 2005 and became a Board Certified Chaplain through Neshama: Association of Jewish Chaplains. For ten years, Katy served as a staff chaplain at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and then as a hospice chaplain. She is the co-founder and President pro-tem of the Jewish Climate Action Network (jewishclimate.org) and the facilitator of the One Earth Collaborative (oneearth.today), a project of Open Spirit in Framingham, MA, where she engages with the community as an eco-chaplain. lives in Wayland, MA, with her spouse, Gabi Mezger, who leads the singing at Ma'yan Tikvah. She blogs about Torah and Earth at www.mayantikvah.blogspot.com.

Rabbi Adina Allen is a spiritual leader, writer and designer of transformative learning opportunities. Integrating a lifetime of experience in the creative arts with her rabbinic training Adina provides a unique and enlivening approach to Judaism. Her original research using painting, text study and reflective writing to generate contemporary midrash was published in the Winter 2013 edition of the CCAR Journal. Adina has taught Jewish text through a wide variety of creative arts modalities at institutions including Hillels, synagogues, and Jewish communal organizations across the country and abroad. As a recipient of the CIRCLE Fellowship Adina designed and facilitated a semester-long curriculum “Art as Inquiry into Interfaith Leadership” that resulted in an exhibition of the art and writing produced by participants. Adina is co-founder of the Movement Minyan, a method that explores Jewish liturgy through embodied practice, and was the 2012 National Havurah Summer Institute Liturgist in Residence. Former Assistant Editor of Tikkun magazine, Adina is a contributing writer to the Huffington Post and her work has been published in Tikkun, The Journal for Inter-Religious Dialogue, and State of Formation, among others. Ordained by Hebrew College in 2014 Adina is an alumnus of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship.

Shlomo Moshe Amar (שלמה משה עמר; Arabic: سليمان موسى عمار; born April 1, 1948) is the former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel. Amar was born in Casablanca, Morocco, to Eliyahu and Mima (Miriam) Amar. His family immigrated to Israel in 1962 when he was 14. He studied in the Ponovezh Yeshiva.[3] He transferred to a small Yeshiva in the northern town of Shlomi, where at age 19, was appointed the rabbi of the town. At age 20 he also served as the head of kashrut for the city of Nahariyya. Amar studied dayanut in Haifa under Rabbi Yaakov Nissan Rosenthal. Amar was a close associate and student of the spiritual leader of the Shas party and former Sephardi Chief Rabbi, Ovadia Yosef. Before his appointment as Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, Amar had served as the head of the Petah Tikva Rabbinical Court. He was elected chief rabbi of Tel Aviv in 2002, the first sole Chief Rabbi of the city. He served in the position of Rishon LeZion from 2003 to 2013; his Ashkenazi counterpart during his tenure was Yona Metzger. In 2014 he became the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem.

American Veterans (AMVETS), established 10 December 1944, is a non-partisan, volunteer-led organization formed by World War II veterans of the United States military. It advocates for its members as well as for causes that its members deem helpful to the nation at large. The group holds a Federal charter under Title 36 of the United States Code. It is a 501(c)19 organization.

Yehoyada Amir is a Professor of Modern Jewish Thought at Hebrew Union College – Jerusalem. His attention is drawn to religious, humanistic approaches to Jewish existence in light of modernity, the memory of the Shoa, and the unique responsibility of Israeli Jews. For ten years (1999-2009) Rabbi Amir served as the director of HUC's Israel Rabbinic Program. Rabbi Amir is an active member of Maram, the Israel Council of Reform Rabbis and served in various periods as a board member of the council. He has a leading role in contemporary theological-religious, social and ethical discourse in Israel's Reform Movement as well as in neighboring circles.

As JTS’s director of community engagement, Rabbi Julia Andelman oversees adult learning programs across North America, digital learning, continuing rabbinic education, millennial engagement, and Prozdor. Since joining JTS in 2013, she has initiated livestreaming of JTS’s public lectures, created a video studio for digital learning programs, developed high-level curricula for congregations and other settings, and increased continuing rabbinic education tenfold.Julia previously served as the rabbi of Congregation Shaare Zedek in Manhattan, the director of adult education and programming at Park Avenue Synagogue, and the director of the iEngage Project at the Hartman Institute of North America. She was ordained by JTS in 2006.

Mollie Andron holds a double Masters in Midrash and Jewish Experiential Education from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and a BA in Religion from Bard College. Mollie spent her childhood growing up between the US and Israel. She has worked in a variety of Jewish educational settings, including most recently as Associate Director Rabbinical Engagement and Education at Hillel International. She has also worked for American Jewish World Service, the Jewish Education Project, The Heschel School, TEVA Learning Alliance, Storahtelling, and Eden Village Camp. When Mollie isn't working she is spending time with humans (big and small), the stories that we tell ourselves, plays and playing, cooking and eating, moving around, sunglasses, singing, reading children books, staring at people on the subway until they have to look, breaking down barriers, crossing thresholds and reading Midrash.

Contributors who wish to remain anonymous may share their work under a pseudonym or under no name. These are works that have been translated by such contributors. If ever in the future they wish to remove this veil of anonymity, they may do so by contacting us.

Founded by Rabbi Daniel Raphael Siverstein, Applied Jewish Spirituality is a home for deep, accessible online courses and resources on the texts and practices of Jewish meditation and spirituality. It's mission is to bring life-changing wisdom and practical guidance to anyone seeking them.

Trisha Arlin is a liturgist, teacher, performer and student of prayer in Brooklyn, NY and was a part-time rabbinic student at the Academy of Jewish Religion (AJR), 2012-18. Trisha was the Liturgist-In-Residence during the National Havurah Committee’s 2014 Summer Institute, has served as Scholar or Artist In Residence at many synagogues where she has read, led services and taught her class, Writing Prayer. since the pandemic began, Trisha has been on Zoom teaching prayer writing, sharing her liturgy and doing readings with Ritualwell, Haggadot.com, for synagogues around the country as well as small freelance groups. She is a founding builder of Bayit’s Liturgical Arts project. Trisha received a BA in Theater from Antioch College in 1975 and MFA in Film (Screenwriting) in 1997 from Columbia University. In 2009/2010, Trisha was an Arts Fellow at the Drisha Institute. In 2011, she graduated from the sixth cohort of the Davennen Leadership Training Institute (DLTI). A longtime member of Kolot Chayeinu/Voices of our Lives, a progressive unaffiliated congregation in Brooklyn NY, Trisha’s liturgy has been used at services and ritual occasions and in newsletter there and at venues of many denominations around the world. Her work has been published in her book, Place Yourself: Words of Poetry and Intention (a collection of liturgy and kavannot. Foreword by Rabbi Jill Hammer, Artwork by Mike Cockrill. 2019 Dimus Parrhesia Press); the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion; Seder Tefillot, Forms of Prayer: Prayers for the High Holydays (Movement for Reform Judaism); B’chol Levavecha (CCAR Press); Beside Still Waters: A Journey of Comfort and Renewal (Bayit & Ben Yehuda Press); A Poet’s Siddur (Ain’t Got No Press); Studies in Judaism and Pluralism (Ben Yehuda Press) and can be found online at TrishaArlin.com, at RitualWell, and of course, the Open Siddur Project.  You can support her work by buying her book, making a one time donation through PayPal @trishaarlin or monthly support via Patreon.

The Aronin family are Kohanim, descendents of Aaron, brother of Moses and the first Kohen Gadol (high priest). Family legend claims descent from Simon the Just, one of the Great Sages. The symbolism of the crest recalls this history. The Aleph stands for the Aronin name. The shape of the crest represents the mitre (headpiece) of the Kohen Gadol. The three letters—Taf, Ayin and Gimel—stand for Torah, Avodah, Gemilot Chasadim (law, divine service, and good deeds), the three pillars upon which the world rests, according to Simon the Just in Pirke Avot. The three red stones represent these pillars and the large stone, the world. (The stones also recall the breastplate worn by the Kohen Gadol, which had four rows of three stones representing the twelve tribes of Israel.) The Aronin rabbis of Eastern Europe wore a signet ring bearing the Aronin crest, which was used as an official seal by dipping the ring in wax. Ben Aronin used a picture of the crest on his stationery.

Aliza Arzt is a Jewish educator and a member of Havurat Shalom in Somerville MA. She was liturgist in residence at the National Havurah Committee (NHC) in 2016. She is particularly interested in Hebrew and what we can learn from Hebrew words in the Tanakh and in tefilot (prayers). In her other incarnations, she is a home care speech therapist, potter, parent of young adults, and gecko keeper.

Arik Ascherman is an American-born Israeli Reform rabbi, and co-founder and former Executive Director for Rabbis for Human Rights. As a human rights and political activist, he has spearheaded protests to defend Palestinians against Israeli settler violence. He appears in the 2010 documentary Israel vs Israel. In 2009 he was co-recipient (with Alice Shalvi) of the Leibowitz Prize, presented by the Yesh Din human rights organization for public activism. In 2011 he was co-recipient (with Rabbi Ehud Bandel, a co-founder of Rabbis for Human Rights) of the Gandhi Peace Award," for their nonviolent methods of resolving human rights abuses in Israel and the Occupied Territories."

Yoni Ashar is a graduate student in clinical psychology at the University of Colorado-Bolder. His research interests include biological and statistical approaches to understanding well-being and interventions enhancing well-being.

The Assemblea Dei Rabbini D'Italia is an association of Orthodox rabbis in Italy.

Jeffrey Astrachan is rabbi of Temple Beth Israel, York, Pennsylvania.

Samuel Avital, born in Sefrou (near Fez in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco), is a mime artist and educator teaching kinesthetic awareness and ḳabbalah. He moved to a kibbutz in Israel when he was fourteen. From 1958 he studied dance and drama at the Sorbonne in Paris, and also mime under Étienne Decroux, Marcel Marceau and Jean-Louis Barrault. He moved to the United States, and in 1971 started a school of mime, Le Centre du Silence, in Boulder, Colorado.

Rabbi Gershon Avtzon is the founder and Rosh Yeshivah of the Yeshivas Lubavitch Cincinnati.

Azriel is a retail worker with a wife and daughter.

Rabbi Stephen Baars is a Jewish educator, motivational speaker, and marriage counselor. Born and educated in London, Rabbi Baars did nine years of post-graduate studies at the Aish HaTorah Rabbinical College in Jerusalem and studied improvisational comedy at UCLA.

Milton Yehoshua Balkany (born 1946) is an American Orthodox Jewish rabbi, past director of the Jewish girls′ school Bais Yaakov of Midwood, conservative political activist and fundraiser from Brooklyn, New York, dubbed "the Brooklyn Bundler." In September 1960, Balkany founded Bais Yaakov of Brooklyn, now Bais Yaakov of Midwood, a strictly orthodox girls′ school in Borough Park, and served as its dean. A conservative Republican, he has been active in political fundraising since the early 1980s, mainly for Republican politicians, and has also often acted as a lobbyist for various Jewish causes. Dubbed "the Brooklyn Bundler," he had a reputation as someone who had access not only to elected officials but to several government agencies as well. For several years, he gave the invocation at an annual dinner honoring President Ronald Reagan, and was offered to become the rabbi chaplain of the Senate, an offer he declined. In 1994, Balkany tried to have David Luchins, an Orthodox Jew, official of the Orthodox Union, self-described liberal, and then aide to Senator Daniel Moynihan excommunicated by a Jewish religious court, blaming him for having "caused yeshivas in the land of Israel to lose money." He became widely known for giving public religious benedictions (brakhot) to senior politicians at city council, state legislature, and Congress, where he served as guest chaplain in June 2003, opening the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives with the prayer "I stand here today among the jewels of our nation, men and women who are precious, who radiate dedication, and they have been selected as the leaders of our land." He is the son-in-law of Aaron Rubashkin.

Rabbi Ehud Bandel is the former President of the Masorti Movement in Israel.

Daniel Bar Sadeh-Weise, from Jerusalem, was born in 1984 in Gemany, grew up in Greece, and made Aliyah to Israel to study in Yeshivah. He is of a mixed Ashkenazi and Sefaradi background and speaks seven languages.

Rabbi Lior Bar-Ami is a Reform/Liberal movement rabbi in Europe. He was ordained at Abraham-Geiger-College in Berlin, Germany in 2016. Rabbi Bar-Ami has served as rabbi for The Liberal Synagogue in Toulouse, France and Or Chadash Synagogue in Vienna, Austria.

Sarah Barasch-Hagans is a rabbinical student at RRC.

Isabel Bard (she/hers) lives in London. Within the walls of a yeshiva, she has studied at the Drisha High School Programme, Yeshivat Hadar, and the Conservative Yeshiva; without them, she has a punctuality-challenged twitter parsha practice and a half-dozen amazing phone chevrutot. She enjoys midrash, wearing tsitsit, and vegan babka.

Rabbi Rachel Barenblat (a/k/a the Velveteen Rabbi) serves Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires. She holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and is author of six volumes of poetry, among them 70 faces: Torah poems (Phoenicia, 2011) and Texts to the Holy (Ben Yehuda, 2018). A founding builder at Bayit: Building Jewish, she resides in western Massachusetts. She has blogged as the Velveteen Rabbi since 2003.

Rabbi Samuel Barth is Senior Lecturer of Liturgy and Worship at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He was ordained at Leo Baeck College in London, following undergraduate studies in Mathematical Physics and Philosophy at the University of Sussex and the Open University (UK). He is completing doctoral work at New York Theological Seminary, exploring the use of Psalms in the interfaith context. Recently, Rabbi Barth served as a congregational rabbi in Austin, Texas, and Gloucester, Massachusetts. In the past, he served as dean and senior vice president for Academic Affairs at the Academy for Jewish Religion, a pluralistic seminary in Riverdale, New York, where he was instrumental in establishing the cantorial program and a second campus in Los Angeles.

Having spent his childhood in science museums, Aryeh Baruch (אריה ברוך) finds a deep connection to the Divine through science and mathematics. He composes (often math or science related) poetry in Hebrew and English. Aryeh has a Masters (and one day a PhD) in theoretical mathematics.

Rabbi Avi Baumol is serving the Jewish community of Krakow as it undergoes a revitalization as part of a resurgence of Jewish awareness in Poland. He graduated Yeshiva University and Bernard Revel Graduate School with an MA in Medieval Jewish History. He is a musmach of RIETS and studied at Yeshivat Har Etzion in Alon Shevut. He served as a rabbi in Vancouver British Columbia for five years. Rabbi Baumol is the author of The Poetry of Prayer by Gefen Publishing, 2010. He also co-authored a book on Torah with his daughter, Techelet, called Torat Bitecha. In addition, he is the Editor of the book of Psalms for The Israel Bible. In summer 2019 Rabbi Baumol published In My Grandfather’s Footsteps: A Rabbi’s Notes from the Frontlines of Poland’s Jewish Revival. His latest book is called Moadim Le’Simcha: Laws, Customs and Meaning of the Jewish Festivals.

Bayit: Building Jewish (formerly, Bayit: Your Jewish Home) was founded in December 2017 by a group of rabbis and lay leaders seeking to become a collaboration engine for building "a radically inclusive and enlivening Judaism for all ages and stages. We aim to give you tools for building the Judaism that you yearn for, renewing Judaism so that your Judaism can renew you."

Rabbi Michael Beals serves Congregation Beth Shalom in Wilmington, Delaware. He is a 1997 graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary. Rabbi Beals is also a graduate of the University of Judaism in Los Angeles (MA Hebrew Letters), The American University in Washington DC (MA International Relations), and University of California at Berkeley (BA Political Science). He received the Raoul Wallenberg Fellowship at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Beyond his accomplished education, Rabbi Beals has also worked in a variety of roles from serving as a management analyst developing multi-cultural training programs to working with young and old in programs of music therapy, Shabbat programming, and providing pastoral counseling and support to the sick and elderly and to the families that support them.

Rabbi Manny Behar is former executive director of the Queens Jewish Community Council.

Dr. Malachi Beit-Arié (1931-2023) is a professor of paleography at Hebrew University.

Alan Belsky is a graduate of Yeshiva of Flatbush, an Everett Fellow at the NHC Summer Institute (2007), an alumnus of Moishe House Silver Spring, MD, and a past fellow of Yeshivat Hadar (2011).

A native of Brooklyn, New York, Stephen Belsky is a graduate of the Yeshiva of Flatbush, the State University of New York at Binghamton, and the Educators Program of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. He received semikha at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, and while studying there held internships at Beth David Synagogue in West Hartford, Connecticut, and the International Rabbinic Fellowship. Before starting semikha, Stephen taught at the Schechter high school in Teaneck, New Jersey, and after ordination, he returned to education, teaching Jewish Studies in the middle and high school divisions of Yeshivat Akiva in Southfield, Michigan. In addition to classroom teaching, Stephen has taught and lectured both in his local community and in synagogues across the eastern United States.

Rabbi Arnold Mark Belzer is the Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Mickve Israel in Savannah, Georgia. He studied at Hunter College and Iona College, where he received his BA in History. He was ordained rabbi and received BHL, MAHL, and DD degrees from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. A co-founder and now president of the Sino-Judaic Institute, he has traveled extensively in China. In 1985 he conducted the first Jewish worship service in Kaifeng, China, since the 1860s. Rabbi Belzer has lectured widely on the subject of Jews in China as well as studies of other exotic Jewish communities and comparative religion. He is a co-founder of the Mastery Foundation (an international, interfaith organization promoting transformation and reconciliation). Committed to interfaith cooperation and understanding, Rabbi Belzer is an ardent student of comparative religion and religious syncretism. He lectures regularly on a variety of subjects at the Savannah Learning Center and synagogues and churches around the United States.

Yoel Fievel ben Avram is an attorney from Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

Sholomo ben Levy (b. Queens, New York, 1964) is the spiritual leader of Beth Elohim Hebrew Congregation in Saint Albans, New York, and president of the International Israelite Board of Rabbis (IIBR). He is the son of Rabbi Levy ben Levy (1935-1999), former chief rabbi of the IIBR. In 1985 he was ordained by the Israelite Rabbinical Academy and graduated from Yale University with a masters degree in African-American Studies in 1988. Levy received his masters degree in American History from Columbia University in 2005. He teaches History at Northampton Community College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Founded in 1999, the Ben Yehuda Project digitally transcribes Hebrew works in the Public Domain.

Rabbi Peter Berg, originally from Ocean Township, New Jersey, is the senior rabbi of The Temple, in Atlanta, Georgia. Prior to coming to The Temple, he served as rabbi of Temple Beth Or in Washington Township, New Jersey and as the Associate Rabbi of Temple Emanuel-El in Dallas, Texas. Additionally, he served Congregation Kol Ami in White Plains, New York as a rabbinic intern and at Beth El Hebrew Congregation in Alexandria, Virginia, as its Youth Director. He holds a degree in Education and Human Development, with a focus in human services, counseling, and Judaic Studies, from The George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He earned his M.A. in Hebrew Literature and his rabbinic ordination from Hebrew Union College- Jewish Institute of Religion in New York and Jerusalem, where he was a Steinhardt Fellow. Rabbi Berg also holds a certificate in Chemical Dependency and Spiritual Counseling and is a trained Disaster, Fire, and Police Chaplain. He serves as a Chaplain for The Georgia State Patrol. In 2009, Rabbi Berg was inducted into the College of Preachers at Morehouse College. Rabbi Berg was a member of the 2012 Leadership Atlanta class and is an active member of the Downtown Atlanta Rotary Club. He was recently re-appointed to the Georgia Holocaust Commission by the Lt. Governor. In 2013, Rabbi Berg was named by Newsweek and The Daily Beast as one of the top 50 most influential rabbis in the United States of America. From 2016-2022, he was named annually by Georgia Trend as one of the Most Influential Georgians and from 2019-2023 as one of Atlanta's Most Powerful Leaders. In 2023 he received Atlanta's highest honor from Mayor Dickens, the Phoenix Award, as well as the Distinguished Advocate Award from The American Jewish Committee. He has served on numerous communal and advisory boards, including: The American Jewish Congress, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Mental Health Association, Dallas for Children, the Westwood Area Clergy Association, The New York Service for the Handicapped, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) National Council, The Faith Alliance of Metro Atlanta (FAMA), The American Jewish Committee, and The Jewish Family and Career Services (JFCS) He served as national Program Chair for the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) also served on the editorial committee for the CCAR High Holy Day prayer book, Mishkan haNefesh. Rabbi Berg currently serves on the Board of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the Anti-Defamation League, Georgia Early Education Alliance for Ready Students (GEEARS), Faith In Public Life, OUTCRY: Faith Voices Against Gun Violence, Three Star, Home First, Georgia Interfaith Public Policy Center, The Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta, and the Commission On Social Action for Reform Judaism. He is Past President of the Atlanta Rabbinical Association. Rabbi Berg serves on the advisory Boards of: The American Jewish Archives (Vice-Chair), The Jewish Fertility Foundation, JumpSpark Teen Initiative, The Islamic Speakers Bureau, and the Grady Hospital Foundation.

Zackary Sholem Berger is a poet in English, Yiddish, and Hebrew living in Baltimore, where he is a member of Beth Am and Hinenu.

Pope Francis (born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, [b] 17 December 1936) is the 266th and current Pope of the Catholic Church, a title he holds ex officio as Bishop of Rome, and Sovereign of the Vatican City. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Bergoglio worked briefly as a chemical technician and nightclub bouncer before beginning seminary studies. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1969 and from 1973 to 1979 was Argentina's provincial superior of the Society of Jesus. He became the Archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998 and was created a cardinal in 2001 by Pope John Paul II. Following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI on 28 February 2013, a papal conclave elected Bergoglio as his successor on 13 March. He chose Francis as his papal name in honor of Saint Francis of Assisi. Francis is the first Jesuit pope, the first from the Americas, the first from the Southern Hemisphere and the first non-European pope since the Syrian Gregory III in 741. (via wikipedia)

Rabbi Alvin Berkun is the rabbi emeritus at Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He served as Jewish chaplain for the Veterans' Administration in Pittsburgh, and as a U.S. Navy chaplain during the Vietnam era.

Rabbi Lauren Berkun is a Vice President of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, where she directs Rabbinic Initiatives and is a member of the senior executive team. She also oversees staff education, training and curriculum development for Hartman’s iEngage project. She is a summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, graduate of Princeton University with a BA in Religion and was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary. A Wexner Graduate Fellow, a CLAL Rabbinic Intern, and a Rabbinic Fellow in the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Rabbinic Leadership Initiative, Rabbi Berkun also served as the JTS Midwest KOLLOT Rabbinic Scholar, Director of Lifelong Learning at Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield, Michigan, and frequent scholar-in-residence for leadership seminars at Jewish Federations across North America. She has written and taught extensively on the topics of mikveh, sexual ethics, and body image.

Jessica Berlin is a Jewish farmer.

Ari Berman (born February 18, 1970), from Queens, New York, is an American-Israeli Modern Orthodox and Religious Zionist rabbi and academic administrator, serving as the fifth president of Yeshiva University.

Rabbi Stuart L. Berman is the Police-Clergy Liaison for the New York City Police Department and chaplain for the Sanitation Department. In 1985, Rabbi Berman became the first rabbi to ever be appointed a prison chaplain in the State of Florida. He served on President Obama's Presidential Inaugural Committee, the Presidential Transition Committee, the White House Conference on Children and Youth Drug Abuse Panel, as well as the White House Conference on Aging. He also served as rabbi for the Woodside Jewish Center.

Rabbi Phyllis O. Berman has, since the early 1980s, been a leading Jewish-renewal liturgist, prayer leader, story-writer, and story-teller. From 1994 to 2005, Berman was Director of the Summer Program of the Elat Chayyim Center for Healing and Renewal. She is the co-author of Tales of Tikkun: New Jewish Stories to Heal the Wounded World (1996); A Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven: The Jewish Life-Spiral as a Spiritual Journey (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2002); The Tent of Abraham: Stories of Peace and Hope for Jews, Christians, and Muslims (2006), and Freedom Journeys: Tales of Exodus & Wilderness across Millennia (2013).

Tim Daniel Bernard is Director of Digital Learning and Engagement at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Previously, he was the Community Manager at Seeking Alpha and Grants and Communications Manager at PELIE, having taught Humash and Rabbinics at the Hannah Senesh Community Day School in Brooklyn for two years. He was also Kollel Fellow for a year at Yeshivat Hadar. Tim was ordained at JTS in 2009, where he also graduated from the Graduate School with an MA in Talmud & Rabbinics. He grew up in London and earned an undergraduate degree in Philosophy from the University of Bristol, which he followed with a year of learning at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem. While in Britain, he was involved for many years in the annual Limmud Conference, as both participant and organizer. Tim is an active member of Kehilat Hadar, where he gives regular divrei Torah (many of which can be found on this site), and co-chaired the Shavuot Retreat in 2011. He is married to Rabbi Ashira Konigsburg, with whom he enjoys traveling, hiking and visiting modern art galleries.

Rabbi Leila Gal Berner was ordained at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and holds a second ordination from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (of blessed memory). She received her doctorate in medieval Jewish history from UCLA. She is Dean of Students of the ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal Ordination where she teaches biblical and medieval history, feminist thought, and midrash. Dr. Berner has taught in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at American University and George Washington and Emory universities, and Swarthmore and Reed colleges.

Rabbi Ellen Bernhardt is the JCRC Director for the Jewish Federation of Delaware.

Aryeh Bernstein is a fifth generation Chicago native, an editor of Jewschool.com, the coordinator of the Back to Basics Beginners Judaism Program at Mishkan Chicago, and an educational consultant for Jewish Council on Urban Affairs. While living in Jerusalem, he helped translate the Koren-Steinsaltz English Talmud edition. He has studied at Columbia, JTS, YU, YCT, and Yeshivat Maale Gilboa, and taught at Yeshivat Hadar, Drisha, Yeshivat Talpiot, the Hartman High School, Camp Ramah in WI, and elsewhere. He has led High Holiday services at Kehilat Hadar for 11 years. And he released a hip-hop album, called A Roomful of Ottomans.

Rabbi David Bigman (b. 1953) is a Modern Orthodox Rabbi. Bigman is the head of Yeshivat Ma'ale Gilboa along with Rabbis Yehuda Gilad and Shmuel Reiner. He helped found the Ein Hanatziv Midrasha for girls and used to head the Ein Tzurim Yeshiva. Bigman developed the Revadim (“layers “) technique for the study of Talmud, combining traditional learning methods with academic research tools.

Mosheh Ḥayyim ben Avraham Abba Bloch (1881-1973) was a rabbi and scholar affiliated with the Neturei Karta movement. Unfortunately, he is also remembered as a historical fabulist and forger of documents.

Rabbi Barry Block is the rabbi of Congregation B’nai Israel in Little Rock, Arkansas. A Houston native, Rabbi Block was ordained in 1991 at the New York Campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, after having been awarded the degree, Master of Arts in Hebrew Letters, at the Los Angeles Campus in 1988. Rabbi Block previously served Temple Beth-El in San Antonio, Texas, beginning in 1992 as Assistant, then Associate, Rabbi; and as Senior Rabbi from 2002 to 2013. Rabbi Block has served Reform Judaism nationally and regionally as a member of the Board of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and Chair of its Resolutions and Nominating Committees, and as President of the Southwest Association of Reform Rabbis. For 21 years, he represented his colleagues throughout Texas and Oklahoma as Rabbinic Advisor of the Union for Reform Judaism’s Greene Family Camp for Living Judaism in Bruceville, Texas. He is a member of the President’s Rabbinic Alumni Council of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Rabbi Block is the author of "Unplanned Fatherhood,” slated for 2013 publication by CCAR Press in The Sacred Encounter: Jewish Perspectives on Sexuality. Rabbi Block is Past Board Chair of the Planned Parenthood Trust of South Texas. In 2013, he completed long service to Methodist Healthcare Ministries, the largest non-governmental provider of indigent health care in south Texas, and Methodist Healthcare System, the largest hospital group and second largest private employer in San Antonio. His service there included several terms as Chair of the Healthcare System’s Ethics and Compliance Committee. In 2012, Human Rights Campaign bestowed its Equality Award upon Rabbi Block at its annual gala in San Antonio.

The Blue Dove Foundation was created to address mental illness and addiction in the Jewish community and beyond. Our mission is to educate, equip, and ignite our Jewish community with tools to understand, support, and overcome the challenges presented by mental illness and substance abuse. As a community with a focus on tikkun olam, we work to eradicate the shame and stigma surrounding these issues. Once we achieve this goal, we can begin to improve and save lives. Mental illness, which includes substance abuse disorders, has come to the forefront over the past couple of years. The shame and stigma that have surrounded the issue for so long are starting to abate. People are talking about the problem and reaching out for help when they need it. For a small organization with big dreams, the Blue Dove Foundation has been making a significant impact. Blue Dove partners with organizations across the United States, Canada, England and Israel to provide mental health education and awareness to Jewish communities, from the unaffiliated to the ultra-Orthodox, as well as non-Jewish groups through interfaith mental health conversations. In our first few years, we have accomplished incredible things, including developing some innovative workshops and programs designed to increase awareness and decrease the stigma around mental illness and substance abuse through a Jewish lens. To continue our work, we rely upon the generosity of our community to provide the support that so many members of our community need. To donate and learn more about our organization, visit the Blue Dove Foundation website.

Rabbi Inbar Bluzer Shalem is co-founder and CEO of Rashut Ha`Rabim, an umbrella organization for the renewal of Jewish life in Jerusalem.. Previously, Inbar founded and directed Haifa Hillel and was the first Hillel shlicha to the University of Massachusetts; she holds a BA in economics and an MA in humanitarian affairs through a joint program of Israelis and Palestinians in Italy. Inbar is the alumna of six pluralistic Batei Midrash programs in Israel. She has recently been ordained as a rabbi following completion of her rabbinic studies at Hebrew Union College. She also received an MA in pluralistic Jewish education from Hebrew University. Inbar is married and lives in Jerusalem with three of the most amazing children in the city.

Joshua Boettiger is the rabbi and spiritual leader of Temple Emek Shalom in Ashland, Oregon. Prior to this, he served as the rabbi of Congregation Beth El in Bennington, Vermont. He is a graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia, and is a Rabbis Without Borders Fellow. He has served on the Boards of Rabbis for Human Rights North America, Vermont Interfaith Power and Light, and was the Vermont coordinator of the Jewish Justice Initiative. Rabbi Boettiger teaches Jewish meditation on a weekly basis and leads twice yearly silent retreats with his wife, Rabbi Vanessa Boettiger. He has taught at Williams College, Southern Vermont College, and been a scholar in residence at different locations around the country, teaching on topics ranging from modern Jewish thought to biblical Hebrew to the history of Jewish poetry. Rabbi Boettiger has an abiding interest in sacred spaces and continues to work as a builder of ritual structures – from sukkahs and chuppahs to prayer/meditation spaces. He has published articles in Parabola, Zeek and other online magazines.

Rabbi Moshe E. Bomzer is an Orthodox rabbi in the United States. He has served congregations in Hollywood, Florida, Toronto, Ontario and in Albany, New York. He received his rabbinical ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University after pursuing Talmudic studies at Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim in Forest Hills, NY and Jerusalem, as well as at Yeshiva Ner Yisroel in Baltimore. Besides his congregational work, he serves as a hospital chaplain, and as mashgiaḥ, heading the Vaad HaKashruth of Albany, New York, and representing in the Capital District, OU Kosher, Star-K, Kof-K, and CRC.

Jonah Sampson Boyarin is an educator, writer, and Yiddish translator, and a member of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. His preferred genres are tkhines and science fiction, go know.

Dr. Carina Brankovic is a Research Associate in Religious Studies at the Institute of Protestant Theology, the University of Oldenburg. She was trained in Religious Studies, Protestant Theology and Jewish Studies at the University of Heidelberg, the College of Jewish Studies Heidelberg and the University of Zurich. She completed her PhD. on George Tabori (1914-2007), a Hungarian born Jewish writer and theater director. Her doctoral thesis addresses ritual and religious constructions in Tabori's Holocaust play "The Cannibals" (New York City 1968) and "Die Kannibalen" (West-Berlin 1969). Her interests focus on the post-Holocaust German-Jewish theater as well as on Material Religion, especially the representation of religion(s) in museums.

Reuven Brauner is a writer in Ra’anana, Israel. He has published numerous e-books of Jewish texts which are available for download at Tzvee Zahavy's website, halakhah.com.

Rabbi Daniel S. Brenner is chief of Education and Program at Moving Traditions, a Jewish non-profit organization which runs educational program for teenagers. From 2007-2011, Brenner was the founding executive director of Birthright Israel NEXT. He directed graduate-level training programs at Auburn Theological Seminary and at CLAL- the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, both in New York City. In 2009, he was named by Newsweek Magazine as one of the fifty most influential rabbis in America.

Yonah Bromberg Gaber writes about intersectional queerness from Washington, DC. Having grown up in the Conservative Movement, they seek to build queer space and belongingness within traditional egalitarian communities.

Isaac Brooks Fishman is a volunteer with IfNotNow.

Rabbi Sharon Brous is a Conservative movement rabbi in the United States. She is the senior rabbi of IKAR (Los Angeles, California) and the author of The Amen Effect: Ancient Wisdom to Heal Our Hearts and Mend Our Broken World (2024).

Devorah Brous (@Dev.Brous, she|her) is an urban homesteader and herbalist, ritual facilitator, and earth/soul-care consultant, "root down to rise up." She holds two Masters degrees in conflict resolution and development studies. A community organizer with systems-impacted and underinvested communities for 25 years (indigenous, houseless, and formerly incarcerated people), she is the former founding Executive Director of two mission-driven environmental nonprofits, BUSTAN, and Netiya. Her practice, FromSoil2Soul, is dedicated to tending people in time-tested earth-based traditions as well as emergent wellness exercises. Rooted in mystical Judaism and earth-based Torah, her nature-based healing practice is also grounded in soil science and the wise-woman tradition of folk herbalism woven together with poetry and prayer.

Maia Brown (she/her) is a musician, visual artist, writer, translator, dance-leader and educator on unceded Duwamish, Coast Salish land in Seattle, Washington.

 

Asher Hillel Burstein is a cantor, poet, singer-songwriter, and teacher. Besides his education in various yeshivot, a bachelors degree in Hebrew, an MFA in Fiction Writing, and a masters in Jewish Studies, he is working on a third masters degree in Secondary English Education while finishing up his doctorate in Creative Writing.

Bradley Burston (Hebrew: בראדלי בורסטון‎) is an American-born Israeli journalist. Burston is a columnist for Haaretz and senior editor of Haaretz.com. He writes a blog called "A Special Place in Hell".

Rabbi Simcha Daniel Burstyn is a rabbi, gardener, permaculturalist, teacher, singer, spiritual director, peace activist. He has been a member of Kibbutz Lotan for 22 years, the only kibbutz that is also an ecovillage. In the Kibbutz’s Center for Creative Ecology, Rabbi Simcha teaches courses in Peace and Social Justice and Jewish Approaches to the Environment.

Rabbi Shmuel Menachem Butman (born 1944) is a Chabad rabbi in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York. He is the director of Lubavitch Youth Organization. He has served for many years as the director of the L'Chaim weekly magazine. After Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson suffered a stroke, Butman emerged as one of the leading proponents of Chabad messianism.

Born and raised in Jerusalem, Rabbah Gila Caine graduated from the Hebrew University with an MA in Contemporary Judaism and received her rabbinic ordination at the HUC-JIR’s Israeli program in 2011. She now serves as rabbi at Temple Beth Ora congregation in Edmonton, Alberta, where she lives with her husband, children and two cats.

Joshua Calvo’s research and teaching interests include Arabic and Hebrew language and literature, modern and classical; Sephardic and Arab Jewish history and culture; Ladino and Judeo-Arabic; the experimental novel; literary translation; and creative writing. In 2019–20 he held a fellowship position at the Center for Arabic Study Abroad, American University of Cairo. He is the author of “The Ruins,” in Youssef Rakha’s sultanseal.com, a repository of essays, fiction, poetry, translations, reviews, and photography (2019, with additional essays forthcoming). Publications also include translations of Seliman Menahem Mani’s “The Valley of Demons” (1884) in Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 7, 1880-1918, forthcoming; four prose poems by Mahmoud Darwish for A Blade of Grass: New Palestinian Poetry (Smokestack Books, 2017). In addition to Hebrew and Arabic (near fluent), his languages include French, Spanish, Ladino, Ugaritic, Finnish (reading), and elementary Japanese, Quechua, and Hungarian.

Debra Cash is an award-winning writer and cultural worker whose liturgical work has been anthologized in Anita Diamant's popular books on weddings and mourning, in siddurim of the Reconstructionist and Reform movements, and has been included in life cycle ceremonies from Boston to Tasmania. Her first book, Who Knows One (Hand Over Hand Press, 2010) is available on demand from Blurb. Her second, The Bumblebee's Diwan, is in progress.

Daniel J. Cayre is a founder of Kanisse: a Modern Sephardic + Mizrahi Community.

CenozoicSynapsid is the pen name of a pseudonymous author on Archive of Our Own, a site for sharing fan-fiction.

The Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), founded in 1889 by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, is the principal organization of Reform rabbis in the United States and Canada.

Sarah Shamirah Chandler is the CCO (Chief Compassion Officer) and team leader at the Jewish Initiative for Animals (JIFA) where she works to support Jewish institutions to establish meaningful food policies rooted in Jewish ethics and animal welfare. Sarah holds a M.A. in Jewish Education and a M.A. in Hebrew Bible from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and a certificate in Non-Profit Management and Jewish Communal Leadership from Columbia University. She recently served as the Director of Earth Based Spiritual Practice for Hazon’s Adamah Farm and teaches, writes and consults on a national level on issues related to Judaism, the environment, mindfulness, food values, and farming.

Jacob Chatinover is a Jewish environmental educator. He studied Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University, where he focused on translation, especially poetic and liturgical translation. He is pursuing rabbinic ordination at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts.If you know of a work that is beautiful but inaccessible to English-speakers, let him know!

Lara is a data analyst for the federal government

Yuval Cherlow (born 1957) is a Modern Orthodox rabbi and posek. He is Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Hesder Amit Orot Shaul in Kfar Batya, Raanana, Israel. Cherlow was one of the founders of Tzohar, an organization of religious Zionist Orthodox rabbis in Israel.

Rabbi Yehonatan Chipman is a Jerusalem-based translator and scholar of Jewish texts who has for years been writing a weekly commentary on the Torah portion published on his blog, Hitzei Yehonatan. He is a contributor to the book, Jewish Mysticism and the Spiritual Life: Classical Texts, Contemporary Reflections (2013). In 2000, Rabbi Chipman gave smiḥa to Rabbi Evelyn Goodman-Thau, the first female rabbi of Austria.

Daniel Chorny is a rabbi and Jewish educator at Louis B. Silver Religious School in Pasadena, California. In 2014, he was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

Rabbi Cantor Hillary Chorny completed her cantorial investiture, rabbinical ordination, and a Masterʼs degree in Sacred Music at the Jewish Theological Seminary before joining the staff of Temple Beth Am in August, 2014. Raised in San Diego, CA, she grew up with a deep attachment to the Conservative Jewish community. In 2008, Hillary graduated American University in Washington, D.C. with a B.A. in Jewish studies and a minor in vocal jazz performance. After working as a Judaics instructor and music director in various Jewish communities and camps, Hillary pursued her dream of becoming a cantor. In time, she was inspired by her teachers and family to also pursue the rabbinate. She and her husband, Rabbi Daniel Chorny, met in Israel, and continue to enjoy learning together.

Founded by Rabbi Emily Aronson in February 2022, Chronic Congregation provides community for Jews with chronic illness and/or disability; raises awareness of and reframes how Judaism has traditionally discussed disability and illness; offers new prayers and rituals that reflect the lived experience of disabled and chronically ill Jews.

Alex Cicelsky is a researcher and educator in energy efficient construction, natural materials in buildings and sustainable solutions for shelter, food, energy, water and waste at the Center for Creative Ecology, Israel.

Aryeh Cohen is a professor, a social justice activist, a rabbi, and a lecturer. He teaches all things Rabbinic Literature (Mishnah, Talmud, midrash) and social justice at the Ziegler School for Rabbinic Studies of the American Jewish University. Prof. Cohen is a founder and member of the Shtibl Minyan, a former chair of the Boards of the Progressive Jewish Alliance, and CLUE. He is the co-convener of the Black Jewish Justice Alliance and is the author of Justice in the City: An Argument from the Sources of Rabbinic Judaism (2012).

Rabbi Ayelet S. Cohen is Senior Director of the New Israel Fund’s New York/Tri-State Region. Previously, she was Director of The Center for Jewish Living and The David H. Sonabend Center for Israel at The Jewish Community Center in Manhattan. She served for 10 years at Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, the world’s largest LGBT synagogue serving people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. Passionately committed to progressive and feminist Judaism, she is an activist and an advocate for full inclusion and celebration of LGBT Jews in the Jewish world, and an advocate for LGBT civil rights. Rabbi Cohen has been profiled in the New York Times, was named one of the “Heeb 100,” Heeb Magazine’s “hundred people you need to know about,” and was honored at the 2005 Ma’yan Seder as a leading young Jewish feminist activist. She is a member of the Rabbinical Assembly and the New York Board of Rabbis.

Emmy Cohen studies Religion at American University and is interested in women's roles in religion. Emmy grapples with defining the word "holy."

Danny graduated from the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he began to connect with peers confused about their true direction and disconnected from the inner compass of their emotional and spiritual lives. He realized a calling in meeting people in their place of searching, struggling, and reckoning, helping them find their way to a life of radiance, soulfulness, emotional balance, and relational intimacy. In the years hence, he made it his life's work to walk that path and know it well, finding his own way from depression to a life of heartful presence and well-being, and leading to an exploration of a wide range of fields and intensive meditation and spiritual practice. In addition, Danny pursued study of Torah and wisdom in a variety of yeshivot and institutions in Israel, the U.S., India, Nepal, and Mexico, as well as through the modem worlds of psychology/psychotherapy and transformative change work, and grounded in daily practice of meditation, prayer, and regular intensive retreat. The founding director of Or HaLev Center for Jewish Spirituality and Meditation, Danny now devotes himself to teaching, a role he is delighted and privileged to fulfill. He is profoundly grateful to live a life colored by deep listening, heartfulness, cunosity, humor, and love of people. He teaches meditation, NVC, and works one-on-one with people seeking healing and transformation.

Martin Samuel Cohen was born and raised in New York City, where he received his B.A. summa cum laude from the City University of New York and where he was ordained as rabbi at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1978. In addition to his ordination, Rabbi Cohen earned a Ph.D. in the history of ancient Judaism from JTS, which degree was awarded to him in 1982. The recipient of post-doctoral fellowships at the Hebrew University in 1983 and at Harvard University in 1993, Rabbi Cohen has also lectured on the history of religion at Hunter College of the City University of New York and taught Bible and Talmud both at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York and at the Institute for Jewish Studies attached to the University of Heidelberg in Germany. In 1986, Rabbi Cohen left Europe for Canada, where he accepted the pulpit of the Beth Tikvah Congregation in Richmond, British Columbia. In 1999, he left Canada to assume the pulpit of Congregation Eilat in Mission Viejo, California, the position he left in 2002 to become the rabbi of the Shelter Rock Jewish Center in Roslyn, New York, where he has now completed thirteen years of service. In addition to his work as teacher and rabbi, Rabbi Cohen is an author and has published two scientific studies in the history of pre-kabbalistic Jewish mysticism, four novels and four books of essays, including the Hebrew-language Sefer Ha‘ikarim Livnei Zemanenu, as well as his own 2004 edition of the Book of Psalms, called Our Haven and our Strength: The Book of Psalms in New Translation. More recently, Rabbi Cohen has published the two-volume prayer book Siddur Tzur Yisrael, Zot Nechemati for the house of mourning, a children’s book called Riding the River of Peace, and The Boy on the Door on the Ox, an exploration of the relationship between Torah study and service in the congregational rabbinate. From 1997 to 2000, he served as chairman of the Publications Committee of the Rabbinical Assembly and has for the last dozen years chaired the editorial board of the quarterly journal, Conservative Judaism. Most recently, Rabbi Cohen served as senior editor of the 2012 landmark volume defining Conservative Jewish life, The Observant Life: The Wisdom of Conservative Judaism for Contemporary Jews, and is currently at work on his own Torah translation and commentary.

Rabbi Dovid M. Cohen is the Director of Community Engagement, Strategy and Development for YACHAD, a flagship program of the Orthodox Union (OU) dedicated to addressing the needs of Jewish individuals with disabilities and ensuring their inclusion in every aspect of Jewish life. He is also the Rabbi of Congregation Ohr Torah in North Woodmere, NY. Rabbi Cohen is a Dayan for the Beis Din of America. He maintains a private counseling practice guiding people with relationship issues. He previously served as the Rabbi of the Young Israel of the West Side from 2006 until 2015. He spent five years in Fair Lawn, NJ as assistant to Rabbi Benjamin Yudin at Shomrei Torah. Rabbi Cohen served a Mashgiach Ruchani at Yeshiva University and Stern College for Women and also directed the Honors Program at the Lander College for Women. Rabbi Cohen received his BA from Yeshiva University in 1994, graduating with honors in History. He was ordained by the Rabbi Isaac Elchanon Theological Seminary (RIETS) in 1997 and obtained a law degree from Columbia Law School in 1999 and a Masters in counseling from University of North Texas in 2007.

Rabbi Alfred Cohen, maggid shiur at MTA, received semikhah from Rabbi Yisrael Gustman and from Rabbi Hutner of Mesivta Rabbi Chaim Berlin and served for many years as the mora d'asra (leader of the congregation) of the Young Israel of Canarsie.

A writer and educator, Tamara Cohen served as program director of Ma’yan for many years and edited their feminist haggadah, The Journey Continues. She also collaborated with the Jewish Women’s Archive to create the first Women of Valor posters, and created a women’s Omer calendar in conjunction with the women’s studies department at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Through Project Kesher, she worked as an educator with women in the former Soviet Union. She is a cofounder of Jewish Activist Gays and Lesbians and serves as the director of multicultural and diversity affairs at the University of Florida.

Edward Paul Cohn was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1948. He received his Bachelor of Arts degree with honors from the University of Cincinnati in 1970, his Master of Hebrew letters degree from Hebrew Union College-Jewish of Religion in 1974, and his Doctor of Ministry degree from the St. Paul School of Theology in 1984. From 1974 to 1976, Cohn was the Assistant Rabbi at The Temple, in Atlanta, Georgia. He served as the Rabbi of Beth Israel in Macon, Georgia from 1976 to 1979, and of the New Reform Temple in Kansas City, Missouri, from 1979 to 1983. Before his selection as Senior Rabbi of Temple Sinai in New Orleans in 1987, Cohn was Rabbi of Temple Sinai in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is past president of the Southwest Association of Reform Rabbis. He was appointed by the Mayor of New Orleans to chair the New Orleans Holocaust Memorial Project. He also served as founding chairman of the City Human Relations Committee and is an active leader in the Jewish and larger communities of the New Orleans metropolitan region. From 2005-2007, Cohn served as ethics consultant for MSNBC and appeared on “The Ethical Edge.” Cohn was named contributing editor of the prestigious national journal of preaching, Pulpit Digest, and was asked to serve on the Union for Reform Judaism Congregation Committee on the Family. He was appointed to the Joint Commission on Interfaith Relations sponsored by the Central Conference of American Rabbis, The Men of Reform Judaism and the Union for Reform Judaism. He is past president of the Rabbinical Council of Greater New Orleans and has served as adjunct professor at Dillard University. Cohn currently serves on the Board of Visitors of Xavier University.

Yehudah Cohn completed a D.Phil. in Oriental Studies at the University of Oxford in 2007, and also has an MA from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Originally from London, where he had studied Statistics & Computer Science at University College London and Business Administration at the London Business School, Dr. Cohn had a career as a commodities trader in New York prior to beginning doctoral research. The subject of his dissertation was the early development of Jewish ritual practice and its connection to Graeco-Roman magic. Utilizing archaeological and literary evidence, it dealt with the reception history of particular biblical passages as refracted through the Jewish encounter with the Hellenistic world, and the impact of this encounter on Jewish religion and rabbinic texts. The dissertation was transformed into a book, for Brown University's Judaic Studies series, and was published by the Society for Biblical Literature in 2008 under the title Tangled Up in Text: Tefillin and the Ancient World. More recently he co-authored a Handbook of Jewish Literature from Late Antiquity (135-700 CE) together with Fergus Millar and Eyal Ben-Eliyahu, published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press in 2012.

Richard Collis is a London-based Jewish author, singer, and entrepreneur.

comYakowenko is a Yiddishist in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Rabbi Menachem Creditor serves as the Pearl and Ira Meyer Scholar in Residence at UJA-Federation New York and was the founder of Rabbis Against Gun Violence. A frequent speaker in communities and campuses around the United States and Israel with over 1 million views of his online videos and essays, he was named by Newsweek as one of the fifty most influential rabbis in America. His 22 books and 6 albums of original music include the global anthem "Olam Chesed Yibaneh" and the anthologies "When We Turned Within" and "None Shall Make Them Afraid." He has been involved in the leadership of American Jewish World Service, AIPAC, the Rabbinical Assembly, and the One America Movement, an organization dedicated to bringing together Americans of different faiths and opinions. He and his wife Neshama Carlebach live in New York, where they are raising their five children.

Mohammed S. Dajani Daoudi (Arabic: محمد الدجاني الداودي; born March 19, 1946) is a Palestinian professor and peace activist. Dajani gained international recognition for his work in helping to raise awareness concerning the Holocaust through a variety of media. Dajani has also been active in forming relationships with Jewish and Christian religious leaders and peace activists to spread the Wasatia message of understanding, tolerance, coexistence and brotherhood. Dajani is tackling the ideological roots of extremism. In 2014, he became the center of a controversy when he led a group of students from Al-Quds University to Auschwitz.

Rabbi Joshua M. Davidson is the senior rabbi of Congregation Emanu-El of the City of New York. From 2002 through 2013 he served as senior rabbi of Temple Beth El of Northern Westchester in Chappaqua, New York, and from 1997 to 2002 as assistant and associate rabbi of Central Synagogue in New York City, advising that synagogue’s award-winning Social Action Committee. A graduate of Princeton University and ordained by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Rabbi Davidson’s work has included anti-death penalty advocacy, gay/lesbian inclusion and interfaith dialogue. In 2009, he was honored for his interfaith efforts by the Westchester Jewish Council and the American Jewish Committee, on whose New York board he sits. Rabbi Davidson serves on the board of directors of the Kavod Tzedakah Collective, A Partnership of Faith in New York City. He also is a member of the Hebrew Union College Board of Governors, HUC President’s Rabbinic Council and the Clergy Advisory Board of Interfaith Impact of New York State. He is a past president of both the Westchester Board of Rabbis and the Chappaqua Interfaith Council. From 2001 to 2006, he served as chair of the Central Conference of American Rabbis’ Committee on Justice, Peace and Religious Liberties and vice-chair of the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism. He also has chaired the Commission’s task force on Israel and world affairs. He is a past board member of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America. Rabbi Davidson holds a Corkin Family Fellowship at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and Clal-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. His articles have appeared in The Jewish Week, Commentary Magazine, The New York Post and The Huffington Post; and he is a contributing writer in Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman’s Prayers of Awe series.

Joshua de Sola Mendis is the editor of S&P Central, a purely volunteer effort devoted to sharing information, interest and a sense of connection among Spanish & Portuguese Jewish communities around the world -- also known as Western Sephardim. With their special history, minhag, melodies, and cuisine, it is hoped that S&P and related communities will know more of one another and be able to share their knowledge and love of our mutual traditions.

Rabbi Mendy Deitsch from Brooklyn, New York, is the Director of Chabad of the East Valley, Chandler, Arizona, and is Director of the Pollack Chabad Center for Jewish Life. He is a graduate of Central Yeshiva Tomchei Tmimim Lubavitch Rabbinical Seminary in Brooklyn.

Lieba B. Ruth is the nom du rituèle of Lauren W. Deutsch. Her FaceBook page, “Jewish and Solar Holiday Graphics”, has other new approaches to traditions for our time. A former stringer for JTA, she blogs at Trads in Contempo Life. She is an advocate of no less/more than 10 people in any minyan so there can be more minyanim, less building funds.

Chana Deutsch is a Hungarian translator living in Israel.

Uri DeYoung lives in Samaria, Israel.

Dimus Parrhesia Press is an independent print-publishing house dedicated to disseminating new and historical works of Jewish magic and myth, liturgy and theurgy, folklore and fantasy smuggled from across the River Sambatyon. We aim to revive a Jewish literary culture fascinated by fantastic lore and magical praxes.

David Dine Wirtschafter is the chief rabbi of Temple Adath Israel in Lexington, Kentucky.

The Diwan Ashira Project, founded in 2024 by Ephraim Kahn, produces new liturgical poetry (piyyutim). Each poem, inspired by a different biblical heroine, is released in conjunction with the festivals of the annual Jewish calendar. (Project logo designed by Isaac Montagu.)

Avi Dolgin is a Vancouver native and active member of Congregation Or Shalom.

Rabbi Dr. Laura Duhan-Kaplan is Professor of Jewish Studies and Director of Inter-Religious Studies at the Vancouver School of Theology, and Rabbi Emerita of Or Shalom Synagogue, Vancouver. She holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and Education (Claremont Graduate University, 1991), Rabbinic Ordination (ALEPH Alliance for Jewish Renewal, 2005), and a Graduate Diploma in Spiritual Direction (Vancouver School of Theology, 2010).

Rabbi Tamar Duvdevani is Librarian of the S. Zalman and Ayala Abramov Library at HUC-JIR's Taube Family Campus in Jerusalem. She was ordained in Jerusalem in 2003 and has served as a Rabbi-educator teaching Talmud and Rabbinic literature in Batei Midrash (education centers) throughout Israel. Tamar earned her Ph.D. in 2018 from HUC-JIR/Cincinnati, where she wrote her dissertation on “Literary Aspects of Rabbinic Attributions in the Babylonian Talmud." She has a B.A. in Yiddish and Jewish Studies from The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, an M.A. in Talmud and Gender Studies from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and a M.A.H.L. and M.Phil. from HUC-JIR. She was born and raised in Kibbutz Rosh-Hanikra and lives in Jerusalem.

Rabbi Dov Berl Edelstein (דב אדלשטיין, b. 1926), from Bedek (near Szatmár), Romania, is a retired rabbi, educator, and lecturer. A survivor of the Holocaust, he published his memoir Worlds Torn Asunder in 1985. After World War II, he came to Israel via Cyprus in 1947 and and taught Hebrew. In 1962, he emigrated to the United States where he served Beth Israel Synagogue in Weirton, West Virginia. In the early 1970s he moved to Appleton, Wisconsin where he served the Moses Montefiore Synagogue. While there, he earned a graduate degree in American history and studied the relationship of the Wisconsin press toward President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.

Eden miQedem is a psychedelic Middle Eastern fusion band centered in Israel.

Noah Jonathan Efron (b. 1959) is a professor at Bar-Ilan University, where he was founding chair of the interdisciplinary program on Science, Technology, and Society. He has served as the President of the Israeli Society for History & Philosophy of Science, on the Board of Directors and Scientific Committee of the Eretz Yisrael Museum, and on the Executive Committee of the International Society for Science and Religion. He is a standing member of Israel's National Committee for Transgenic Plants, and participated in Knesset deliberations on human cloning legislation. Efron has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, a fellow of the Dibner Institute for History of Science and Technology at MIT, a fellow at Harvard University, and a visiting professor at Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania. He is a former member of the Tel Aviv City Council, a published author, and since 2011, the host of the popular The Promised Podcast.

Rabbi Ehrman is a former Rebbe at Yeshivat HaKotel and Netiv Aryeh and Rosh Kollel of Kollel Iyun Hanefesh in Yerushalayim. He has authored numerous sefarim including Shiras Yitzchak, Simchas Shmuel, Simchas Hanefesh and also scores of articles in English and Hebrew. He has served as scholar in residence for various congregations throughout the New York area. To invite Rabbi Ehrman to speak in your shul or to learn with him over Skype, he invites you to contact him directly at ally [dot] ehrman [at] gmail [dot] com.

Liora Eilon (ליאורה אילון) of Kibbutz Kfar Azza is a group facilitator at Sapir Academic College.

Rabbi Tamar Elad-Appelbaum is the founder of ZION: An Eretz Israeli Congregation in Jerusalem; and Vice President of the Masorti Rabbinical Assembly. Her work spans and links tradition and innovation, working toward Jewish spiritual and ethical renaissance. She devotes much of her energy to the renewal of community life in Israel and the struggle for human rights. Rabbi Elad-Appelbaum served as rabbi of Congregation Magen Avraham in the Negev; as a congregational rabbi in the New York suburbs alongside Rabbi Gordon Tucker; and as Assistant Dean of the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary in Jerusalem. In 2010 she was named by the Forward as one of the five most influential female religious leaders in Israel for her work promoting pluralism and Jewish religious freedom.

The Elat Chayyim Center for Jewish Spirituality (now a program of Hazon at the Isabella Freedman Retreat Center in Falls Village, CT) began as the Elat Chayyim Jewish Retreat Center, a project from the board of ALEPH (Alliance for Jewish Renewal), the central organization in Jewish renewal. Founded in the early 1990s by by Rabbi Jeff Roth and Joanna Katz, Elat Chayyim offered weekly spiritual retreats year round in the Catskill mountains of New York. Retreats included classes with top faculty, vegetarian food, spiritual community, yoga and meditation offerings, and a unique prayer experience. In 2006, Elat Chayyim relocated to the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. In 2014, both Isabella Freedman and Elat Chayyim (as well as the Teva Learning Center and the Adamah Farm Fellowship) merged with Hazon.

The spirit of Elijah Interfaith Institute is wisdom, inspiration, friendship and hope across religious traditions. Elijah deepens understanding among religions. Elijah Interfaith Institute’s mission is to foster unity in diversity, creating a harmonious world. Elijah Interfaith Institute’s message: The world’s great religions radiate wisdom that can heal the world. Deep level spiritual conversation across inter-religious lines enriches our inner lives, enhances our prayer and opens our hearts. Discover unity and embrace diversity. We are many and we are one.

Initially founded in 2001 to educate about organ donation in Jewish communities, Ematai was relaunched in 2023 to enable Jewish families to navigate an increasingly complex healthcare journey, particularly in the dilemmas of aging and end-of-life treatment.

Shlomo Jack Enkin Lewis is a Yiddish translator and student of Judaic Studies.

Rebecca Ennen is the development and communications director for Jews United for Justice, where she has worked since August 2010. She previously was a staff writer and facilitator with Jewish Dialogue Group, helping Jews talk about thorny issues across political differences. She has also worked as a professional theater artist and community organizer in Philadelphia. She studied theater and education at Swarthmore College and was a Fulbright Fellow in Sri Lanka; in addition, Ennen studied classical Jewish text as a Hadar fellow in New York.

Reuven Enoch is full professor at Ariel University. He is a graduate from the Faculty of Philology of the State University of Tbilisi, having pursued a prolific academic career in this same University, reaching the rank of associate professor in the Department of Ancient Georgian Language Studies, and Dean of the philology department. A specialist in linguistics and modern history of the Caucasus, he is a former research fellow of the Truman Institute of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and has authored more than 50 scientific articles and 12 books. Since 1996, he has been in charge of “Kol Yisrael” broadcasts in the Georgian language. He is a former board member of the Israel Broadcasting Authority and Channel 2 Television, and editor of “Drosha” (Flag), the Israeli monthly magazine in Georgian language.

Elijah’s Journey, a Jewish response to the issues of suicide awareness and prevention, was founded by Efrem Epstein in 2009 to create a Jewish Voice within the greater national suicide awareness effort. You can donate to Elijah’s Journey. If you or anyone you know is in need of help, call 911, or 1-800 273 8255.

Gonzalo Escobar's background is in education, psychology and socio-cultural anthropology. He is the producer of the weekly radio show Si Se Puede. He focuses on issues affecting local, state, and national Latino communities.

Effron Esseiva is part of a renewal ḥavurah on the West Coast of Canada on Bowen Island called Shirat HaYam and is also a member of Or Shalom in Vancouver.

George Griffith was an English Protestant whose missionary press in Izmir published Ladino translations of the Scriptures in the mid-19th century Ottoman Empire. Established in 1838 to serve the Anglican mission, Estampado por Ǧ. Griffit was the only press in Izmir with a Sepharadi cursive ("Rashi") typeface available for publishing in Ladino.

Rav Yitzchak Etshalom was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. He attended Yeshivat Ḳerem b'Yavneh, Rabbi Isaac Elhanan Theological Seminary and Yeshivat Har Etzion before receiving semikhah from the Chief Rabbi of Yerushalayim, Rabbi Itzhak Kolitz. A Los Angeles based Jewish educator since 1985, he launched the Beit Midrash program at YULA Girls High School as well as opening the Beit Midrash at Shalhevet, where he currently serves as Rosh Beit Midrash. Rav Etshalom directs the Tanakh Masters Program at YULA Boys’ High School. He lectures annually at the “Ymei Iyyun” Tanakh Seminar at Herzog College and he teaches Daf Yomi and a popular Navi series at the Young Israel of Century City and through his podcasts on Daf Yomi. His critically acclaimed series “Between the Lines of the Bible” is a methodological guide to the study of Tanakh. His Tanakh podcasts are also available at yutorah.org and at ou.org. He currently writes a weekly lecture for Yeshivat Har Etzion's Virtual Beit Midrash on the book of Amos which will be published as part of the Koren Maggid Studies in Tanakh. Rabbi Etshalom lives in Los Angeles with his wife Stefanie and their 5 children.

Lisa Exler is Director of the Curriculum Project, a joint initiative of Mechon Hadar and Beit Rabban Day School where she is the Director of Jewish Studies. In this dual role, Lisa directs the effort to sharpen goals and set national standards for Jewish education in classical texts while also advancing Beit Rabban’s strong Jewish Studies program. Previously Lisa worked as an experiential educator at American Jewish World Service (AJWS) and as a classroom teacher at the Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan. Lisa has a B.A. and an M.A. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University. She is a graduate of Midreshet Lindenbaum and an alumna of the Dorot Fellowship in Israel. Lisa lives in Washington Heights, NY, with her husband, Elie, and children, Maytal, Amalya and Yaniv.

Shawn Eyer holds a Master of Jewish Liberal Studies from Hebrew College in Newton Centre, Massachusetts, as well as a graduate degree in management from Harvard University.

Dr. Morris M. Faierstein is a Research Associate at the Meyerhoff Center of Jewish Studies at the University of Maryland.

Marcia Falk is a poet, liturgist, painter, and translator who has written several books of poetry and prayer.

Patrick Farrell is an accordionist, composer and bandleader from the USA, currently living in Berlin. His ongoing projects include newly composed Yiddish song duets with soprano Sveta Kundish, the avant/traditionalist klezmer ensemble Yiddish Art Trio, unique and unusual duets with New York trumpeter Ben Holmes, and chamber/folk group Ljova and the Kontraband. Farrell has appeared on dozens of recordings in many different musical genres, including with Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, Adrienne Cooper, and Never Enough Hope. A passport-carrying citizen of Yiddishland, he has performed with many of Europe and North America's leading klezmorim, including The Klezmatics, Alicia Svigals' Klezmer Fiddle Express, Frank London's Klezmer Brass All-Stars, and the Strauss/Warschauer Duo. Over the years, Farrell has taught klezmer music and composition at KlezKanada, Yiddish Summer Weimar, Shtetl Neukölln, and at universities and in workshops throughout North America and Europe. He can be found at www.pattysounds.com

Rabbi Moshe Faskowitz is rosh yeshivah of Yeshiva Madreigas HaAdam in Flushing Meadows, New York.

Dena Feingold is the rabbi of the Beth Hillel Temple in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Rabbi Sam Feinsmith teaches Judaic Studies and coordinates Jewish Life at Chicagoland Jewish High School, IL. Since his recent arrival to Evanston, he has been a regular teacher at the Center for Jewish Mindfulness, where he weaves in the depths of Chassidic and Kabbalistic wisdom. He holds degrees from Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School and Jewish Theological Seminary. Passionate about prayer and contemplative Jewish practice, he has consulted for a number of innovative prayer and minyan-related projects, and has conducted Jewish meditation workshops and retreats for teens and adults. As a tikkun olam ambassador, he served as a Kol Tzedek Fellow and volunteered in Asia and Central America for American Jewish World Service.

Efraim Feinstein is the lead developer of the Open Siddur web application.

Shir Yaakov is an aba, singer, composer, designer, producer and teacher. Whether as Romemu's Musical Director, an officiant at weddings and lifecycle events, or as one-half of the world-hop duo Darshan; in synagogues, yeshivas, and intentional communities around the world; and in Jewish, multi-faith, and non-affiliated spiritual contexts, Shir Yaakov weaves a tapestry of Kabbalistic wisdom, contemporary songwriting, and deep personal spirituality. He has recorded and released four albums of original music. As a spiritual leader, he has led services and ritual in a wide variety of contexts, from Hasidic yeshivas to multifaith, LGBTQ, and earth-based spiritual groups.

Rabbi Edward Feld has published widely on Jewish theology, prayer, the Hebrew Bible, and on halakhic and ethical issues. He is the author of Joy, Despair and Hope: Reading Psalms (Cascade Books) and The Spirit of Renewal: Faith After the Holocaust (Jewish Lights). He is the senior editor of the new Mahzor Lev Shalem, published by the Conservative Movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, for which he was listed as one of the Forward 50 – the 50 outstanding American Jews of 2010. Currently, Rabbi Feld is at work on a companion Siddur Lev Shalem for Shabbat and Festivals. In his distinguished career, Rabbi Feld has served as Rabbi-in-Residence at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America functioning as an advisor and mentor to rabbinical students, Rabbi of the Society for the Advancement of Judaism, and Hillel Director of Princeton University. He is a noted teacher, lecturing throughout North America. He is married to Merle Feld, a poet and playwright and Director of the Rabbinic Writing Institute.

Rabbi Moshe Feller is among the senior shluḥim (emissaries) of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, zt"l. He has been reaching out to fellow Jews in his native Minnesota since the early 1960s.

Len Fellman is a mathematician, educator, and innovator of "transtropilation," the process of translating from cantillized Hebrew, as closely as possible, “word for word and trōp for trōp”, with the main purpose being to aid a person with minimal Hebrew training in following the Hebrew leyning of the Torah and Haftarah readings word for word.

Rabbi Daniel Fellman is the Rabbi at Temple Concord in Syracuse, NY. He formerly served as Assistant and Associate Rabbi at Anshe Emeth Memorial Temple in New Brunswick, NJ. He graduated from Colorado College with a degree in political science in 1996 and the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion with a master’s degree in Hebrew Letters in 2004 and was ordained in 2005. Rabbi Fellman’s community involvements are many. He was selected for Forty Under Forty in Syracuse in 2011. He currently serves on the Board of Interfaith Works and on the City/County Human Rights Commission. He also serves on the board of the Jewish Federation, the Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation of Central New York, and the University Hill Corporation. He served as a White House intern in the Clinton administration and was a Japan-US Senate Scholar.

Since 2004, Shamu Sadeh has been the program director of the Adamah Fellowship and educational farm. Drawn to the integration of soul and soil, Shamu works for the creation of a fruitful ecological landscape while building confidence, mindfulness and community among Adamah Fellows. Before co-founding Adamah, Shamu was a professor of environmental studies, writer, Jewish educator and wilderness guide. He directed the Teva Learning Center in its early years and completed a doctorate in Educational Leadership. In 2010, the “Forward” named Shamu one of the “Forward 50” who made significant contributions to Jewish life in America. Shamu has the yichus – ancestral connections – for Adamah from his great-grandparents and father, Jewish farmers and gardeners who practiced the mystical arts of composting and soil conservation.

Dr. David Fiensy is a graduate of Duke University where he wrote his dissertation on the Seven Benedictions as known in the Syrian Diaspora. He taught New Testament for the last 22 years at Kentucky Christian University and is now retired.

Refoyl Finkl (a/k/a Raphael Finkel) is an activist for the preservation of the Yiddish language, promoting its use and providing fonts, various texts, and tools for writing Yiddish in personal computers. At the University of Kentucky, Dr. Finkel teaches computer science. He earned his PhD in computer science at Stanford University under the supervision of Vinton Cerf.

Elli Fischer is a writer, translator, editor, and rabbi. Hailing from Baltimore, Maryland, he studied at yeshivot and universities, earning a BA in computer science, an MS in Education, and rabbinical ordination from Israel’s Chief Rabbinate. Since making Aliyah to Modiin in 2006, Elli’s keen understanding of Jewish culture has helped him build an excellent reputation as a translator and writer.

I have been teaching Torah and Chassidic writings for over forty years to students of all ages and backgrounds, both on the East Coast and the Midwest. I have been a director of several Jewish organizations in Santa Fe and Colorado. My articles and poetry on a wide variety of Jewish topics have been printed in many publications, and also are available online.

Born in 1954 in Brooklyn, Gabbai Seth Fishman grew up in a secular Jewish home though always felt spiritual. He was shaped by the social and political forces of the late 1960s and 70s. He received a B.A. from Yale in Music in 1976 and an MBA from Wharton School of Business in 1986. In 1989, he met Reb Zalman and began working for him as a gabbai the following year. Married with two daughters, he is active in the Jewish Ritual life of Bucks County, Pennsylvania where he davvens, studies and teaches Ḥasidus.

Dr. Sam Fleischacker is LAS Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Co-Director of the Jewish-Muslim Initiative at the University of Illinois in Chicago. He is the author of several books, including The Good and the Good Book (Oxford, 2015) and Divine Teaching and the Way of the World, (Oxford, 2011), and has been active in Americans for Peace Now, Partners for a Progressive Israel, the New Israel Fund, and J Street.

Everett Fox is a scholar and translator of the Hebrew Bible. A graduate of Brandeis University, he is currently the Allen M. Glick Professor of Judaic and Biblical Studies and director of the program in Jewish Studies at Clark University. Fox is perhaps best known for his translation into English of the Torah. His translation is heavily influenced by the principles of Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig. Buber in 1962 completed their translation of the Hebrew Bible into German. Fox co-translated their Scripture and Translation into English with Lawrence Rosenwald of Wellesley College (Weissbort and Eysteinsson 562). The main guiding principle of Fox's work is that the aural aspects of the Hebrew text should be translated as closely as possible. Instances of Hebrew word play, puns, word repetition, alliteration, and other literary devices of sound are echoed in English and, as with Buber-Rosenzweig, the text is printed in linear, not paragraph, fashion.

Michael Fraade is the JOFEE Director at the Louisville JCC, where he manages the J’s garden, runs educational programs, and coordinates the Gendler Grapevine Fresh Stop Market at the J, a sliding scale local produce market, with local nonprofit New Roots. His work has included creating community partnerships with other Louisville organizations, including within the Jewish and interfaith community, to organize around JOFEE and food justice.

Rabbi Amitai Fraiman (אמתי פריימן) is American-Israeli former IDF Tank Commander. R' Fraiman co-founded “Jerusalem Midnight Biking”, an innovative bike touring company based in Jerusalem. R' Fraiman has professional and leadership experience in content development, advocacy, and relationship building in his work for Garin Tzabar and NYU Bronfman Center, The Arthur Project and most recently for LAVAN.

Sara Fried­man is a lit­er­ary and aca­d­e­m­ic trans­la­tor of Eng­lish and Hebrew. Her trans­la­tion of Glikl: Mem­oirs 1691 – 1719, anno­tat­ed and with an intro­duc­tion by Cha­va Tur­ni­an­sky, was pub­lished by Bran­deis Uni­ver­si­ty Press in 2019. Fried­man holds a PhD in Trans­la­tion Stud­ies from Tel Aviv Uni­ver­si­ty and has taught trans­la­tion and trans­la­tion the­o­ry at Bar Ilan Uni­ver­si­ty.

Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman is the Associate Rabbi at Temple Sinai in Brookline, Massachusetts. She feels blessed to serve this vibrant community through building personal relationships, teaching Torah, innovating new engagement initiatives, working for justice, and leading prayer. Rabbi Shoshana is a leader in the interfaith climate justice movement in New England. She and her husband Yotam Schachter co-wrote The Tide Is Rising, an anthem for the climate movement that has been sung in congregations, climate rallies, and gatherings in the US, Brazil, Denmark, and France.In other pursuits, she has released an album of original music called Guesthouse, clowned for hospitalized children, tended a community garden, and written poetry. Her publications include pieces in the Huffington Post and the Harvard Divinity Bulletin, and she has written an interpretive translation of the weekday prayer service called Siddur V'lo Nevosh: Jewish Prayer as Shame Resilience Practice.Rabbi Shoshana was ordained at Hebrew College Rabbinical School, and is a graduate of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship, JOIN For Justice, and Oberlin College of Arts & Sciences where she was also a Henry David Thoreau Scholar. She grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, and lives in Jamaica Plain with Yotam and their dog Lulu. For sermons, publications, music, and activism visit www.rabbishoshana.com.

Rabbi Ronne Friedman (born October 6, 1947) is a native of Washington, D.C. Rabbi Friedman served as the Senior Rabbi of Temple Israel of Boston (1999-2016) and has served North Shore Congregation Israel in Glencoe, Illinois and Temple Beth Zion of Buffalo, NY. He graduated with a B.A. with distinction in English Literature from Lafayette College in 1969, and received his Masters of Arts in Hebrew Literature from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion from which he was ordained in 1975. He was awarded a Doctorate (honoris causa) from the same institution in 2000. Rabbi Friedman currently serves on the Joint Placement Commission of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Central Conference of American Rabbis and Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, which he chaired for 15 years and as a member of the Reform Pension Board. He also served as a member of the Board of the CCAR for 18 years and chaired the Joint Rabbinic Placement Commission of the Reform Movement (URJ, CCAR and HUC-JIR) for 15 years and served for many years as a member of the UAHC’s (now URJ) Commission of Synagogue Affiliation. His service on national and regional boards has included the National Conference for Community and Justice (formerly the National Conference of Christians and Jews), the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the American Jewish Committee (N.E. Region), the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston and Meretz. He has also taught as Adjunct Clinical Faculty for the HUC-JIR. For the past fifteen years, he has been the host of a monthly television show, Jewish Perspective, which airs on Boston’s WHDH (Boston’s NBC affiliate). Rabbi Friedman has been actively engaged in the work of Jewish Education, the pursuit of Social Justice, the resettlement of Southeast Asian and Soviet Jewish immigrants, efforts to establish Equal Marriage in Massachusetts and to ensure the full inclusion of GLBTQ Jews and their families in the larger Jewish and secular community and the establishment of Interfaith Dialogue. His interest in the use of the Myers-Briggs Type Inventory has led him to create workshops and programs using the MBTI as a tool for teambuilding.

Shelley Frier List is a communications professional in the Baltimore area.

Seth H. Frisch, from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is rabbi of the New Shul of America, Rydal, Pennsylvania, and formerly, senior rabbi of the Historic Congregation Kesher Israel in Philadelphia. A Conservative Rabbi, Rabbi Frisch was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS) in New York City in 1986. He served as a legislative assistant to the chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Rabbi Frisch founded the Lerhaus Institute of Jewish Studies in Abington, Pennsylvania. The Lerhaus Institute quickly became known for its high level of Biblical and Narrative studies and was modeled on the Lehrhaus institute created by Franz Rosenzweig in Germany during the 1920s and then later expanded upon by Martin Buber in the 1930s. The founding of Lehrhaus (note difference in spelling) came at a time of increasing antisemitism which would eventually culminate in anti-Jewish legislation aimed at isolating the Jewish community from the overall German population.

Rebbetsin Hadassah Froman, is a founder of the organization, Roots, and is a pioneer Jewish-Muslim peace activist who lives in the settlement of Tekoa. She was born and raised in Kibbutz Lavi in the Galil. She served in the army and went on to study education at Hebrew University. Hadassah has worked as a schoolteacher and adult educator. She now focuses much of her teaching on the Zohar, the foundational text of Jewish mysticism (Kabbalah). Hadassah is the wife of the late Rabbi Menachem Froman and joined him in forging connections with Palestinian leaders for over thirty years until his death in 2010. She carries on his legacy through her commitment to peace efforts, spreading his poetry and teachings to young people in schools and in the army. She believes firmly in the importance of forging relationships with the Other: "To merit living in this country we must chose life and see the spark of God in everyone. We must remove the barriers between us and create a bridge, because anything is possible but it depends on us."

Rabbi Baruch Frydman-Kohl is the Anne and Max Tanenbaum Senior Rabbi of Beth Tzedec Congregation, the largest synagogue community in Canada. The focus of his rabbinate has been a commitment to family education, life-long learning and care for the housebound, hospitalized and homeless. Rav Baruch initiated the development of a "synaplex" of innovative ritual and educational opportunities to encourage more participation in synagogue life. Beyond the synagogue, Rav Baruch is the past president of the Toronto Board of Rabbis (2012 to 2015) and vice-chair of the Canadian Rabbinic Caucus. As president, he helped to organize the 2011 Path of Abraham mission to bring Jews, Christians and Muslims to the Holy Land to explore the challenges of three religions, two nations and one land. He was featured in the documentaries “The Secret of San Nicandro” for CBC and “Amazing Communities” for Israel television. Rav Baruch offered a prayer to open a session of the United States Senate. Rav Baruch serves on the Board of UJA Federation of Toronto and is a member of the Rabbinic Cabinet of Jewish Federations of North America. He is a member of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards of the Rabbinical Assembly, has served on its international Executive Committee, chaired its international convention and is a past president of two of its regions. In 2016, his service to the community was recognized by UJA Federation with the Gordy Wolfe Award for Jewish Communal Professional Leadership. Rav Baruch was awarded a Coolidge Fellowship to pursue research in an inter-faith community at the Episcopal Divinity School at Harvard University, received a doctorate in Jewish Philosophy from the Jewish Theological Seminary and is a Rabbinic Fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute of Jerusalem. Rabbi Frydman-Kohl is the author of scholarly articles in the area of Jewish philosophy and mysticism.

Dr. Ester R. Fuchs is Professor of Public Affairs and Political Science at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. Fuchs studied at Queens College, CUNY, Brown University, and the University of Chicago. She wrote Mayors and Money: Fiscal Policy in New York and Chicago, and describes herself as a "Pragmatic Utopian." Fuchs served as Special Advisor to the Mayor for Governance and Strategic Planning under New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg from 2001 to 2005. In 2005, Fuchs served as Chair of the New York City Charter Revision Commission. She currently serves as Director of WhosOnTheBallot.org an online platform working to increase voter participation and education in New York City elections. In 2014, she was the recipient of the NASPAA Public Service Matters Spotlight Award, and in 2017, she was awarded the Bella Abzug Leadership Award.

A long-time Jewish environmentalist, Dr. Barak Gale worked with rabbinic institutions on environmental resolutions and with COEJL. Today he lives with his partner Joe in the Cascade Mountains of Washington, runs a small B&B, and continues to practice a little optometry at a low income clinic in the basement of a local Baptist Church. He currently serves as Board President of Washington Wilderness Coalition, and on the Steering Committee of WA Interfaith Power & Light.

Dr. David Garber is a mathematician and a senior lecturer at Holon Institute of Technology.

Avi Garelick is a researcher and organizer based in Washington Heights, New York.

Dr. Leah Garfinkel is a teacher of Jewish literature at Bar-Ilan University.

Rabbi Capt. Mark Getman serves as rabbi for the Temple Emanu-El of Canarsie, Brooklyn.

Rabbi Doniel Ginsberg is associate dean of Ohr Somayach-Tanenbaum College, Jerusalem, and rabbi of Yeshiva Ateres Shmuel, of Waterbury, CT.

Joshua Giorgio-Rubin is a Senior Lecturer of English at Indiana University South Bend, and he spent ten years as the spiritual leader of the Jewish community at Culver Academies in Culver, Indiana. He is the high holidays ḥazzan at Temple Israel in Valparaiso, Indiana, and a student of all things Jewish. He lives in South Bend, Indiana, with his husband, son, and small menagerie.

Born in 1967 in Omaha, Nebraska, Gabrielle Girau Pieck lives with her husband and two young sons in Basel, Switzerland, working as a freelance theologian in the fields of Liberal Judaism and Interfaith Dialogue while teaching mathematics and English. She studied Yiddish literature from a feminist perspective at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York and holds a Masters degree in Jewish Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.

Barbara Gish Scult is a retired social worker.

Rabbi Dr. Yair Hillel Goelman is professor emeritus of the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology, and Special Education at the University of British Columbia. He received his smikha in 1991 from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Shlomo Carlbach, and Akiva Mann, and is rabbi emeritus of the Or Shalom community of Vancouver.

Rabbi Ben Goldberg serves Congregation KTI, Port Chester, New York. He was ordained in 2018 by the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he also received an MA in Midrash (Jewish scriptural interpretation). He received the Bernard and Sydell Citron Scholastic Prize (for an outstanding graduate of JTS), the Rabbi Joel Roth Prize in Rabbinics, and the Cyrus Adler Prize (for the outstanding student entering the graduating class) from JTS. During rabbinical school, Rabbi Goldberg served as the Student Rabbi at Beth El Synagogue in Woodbury, CT and as Rabbinic Intern at Congregation Beth Israel in Scotch Plains, NJ. He interned at Rutgers Hillel, T'ruah (a rabbinic human rights organization), and Hillel International. He completed a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education at Lankenau Medical Center near Philadelphia and spent two amazing summers directing Hebrew-language musicals at Camp Ramah in the Poconos. Born and raised near Philadelphia, Rabbi Goldberg is a graduate of Northwestern University, where he earned a degree in history and Jewish studies. Before enrolling at JTS, he studied for a year at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem. He lives in Port Chester with his husband Daniel Olson, a Jewish educator.

Cantor Ethan Goldberg began serving the Westchester Jewish Center in the fall of 2014. He earned his BA in Music (Voice Performance) and Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University, then attended the H.L. Miller Cantorial School of the Jewish Theological Seminary, earning cantorial investiture and a Masters of Sacred Music in 2016 and an MA in Jewish Educational Leadership from the Davidson School of Education at JTS in 2020. Ethan’s professional interests include the intersection of Judaic arts and Jewish spirituality, synagogue transformation, music education and Cultural Zionism.

Rabbi Efrem Goldberg is the Senior Rabbi of the Boca Raton Synagogue (BRS), in Boca Raton, Florida. BRS is the largest Orthodox Synagogue in the Southeast United States. Rabbi Goldberg came to Boca Raton in 1999 as a member of the Boca Raton Community Kollel, where he founded the BRS Lome Explanatory Service and initiated many learning and outreach programs. In 2001, he became Assistant Rabbi of BRS, in 2003 he was named Associate Rabbi, and in 2005 he was appointed Senior Rabbi. In addition to his position at BRS, Rabbi Goldberg plays a leadership role in many vital components of the greater South Florida community, and in 2010 he was recognized as one of South Florida’s Most Influential Jewish Leaders. He serves as Co-Chair of the Orthodox Rabbinical Board’s Va’ad Ha’Kashrus, as Director of the Rabbinical Council of America’s South Florida Regional Beis Din for Conversion, and as Posek of the Boca Raton Mikvah. He is also on the Board of Directors of the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County, Hillel Day School, Torah Academy of Boca Raton, and Friends of the Israel Defense Forces. Additionally, Rabbi Goldberg is involved in a number of national organizations and projects. He serves as Vice President of the Rabbinical Council of America and as Chairman of the Orthodox Union Legacy Group, and is a member of the AIPAC National Council.

Zach Golden is a long-time Yiddish learner and a graduating rabbinical student at American Jewish University. He lives in California.

Irwin Goldenberg is a retired Reform Rabbi, who served Temple Beth Israel in York, Pennsylvania and who taught at Gettysburg College, York College of Pennsylvania, and St. John’s University,

Rabbi Yosef Goldman is a teacher, spiritual artist, and pastoral caregiver. He is passionate about building sacred community. Yosef received his rabbinic ordination in 2013 from the Jewish Theological Seminary with a concentration in pastoral care and counseling and earned a Masters in Sacred Music.

Rabbi Mikie Goldstein was elected Monday as President of the Rabbinical Assembly of the Conservative Movement in Israel. He serves as a rabbi in Congregation Adat Shalom Emanuel in Rehovot.

Chaplain (Col) Jacob Z. Goldstein (Ret.) was born in a Displaced Persons camp in Paris shortly after WWII. He attended the Rabbinical College of Canada, where he received a degree in Religious Education, and the Lubavich Rabbinical Seminary, where he received a Master of Divinity degree and was ordained as a Rabbi. Beginning his military career in March 1977 as a 1st Lieutenant with the 101st Signal Battalion, he is the longest serving Jewish Chaplain in the US Military. He also serves as a Chaplain for the United States Secret Service, is an Assistant Commissioner of Housing for the State of New York, and sits on many boards and institutions. A brief partial listing of Chaplain Goldstein’s service over the course of 38 years of active duty includes Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada, Operation Desert Storm in Iraq (where he read the Purim Megillah in one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces), and the JTF Patriot Defender Task Force in Israel. He also served several deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq and Kuwait, served at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was Joint Task Force Katrina Staff Chaplain and was Senior Chaplain at “Ground Zero” for all military branches assigned to the World Trade Center. He is the recipient of numerous medals and awards, and retired with honors in April of 2015.

Joel Goldstein is a Jewish educator at Chicagoland Jewish High School where he teaches classes on Jewish law, Talmud, Jewish texts, Halakha and Musar practices, as well as Hebrew. He studied at the Conservative Yeshiva Kollel and at Yeshivat Hadar. There, he served as Gabbai for coordinating leyning and davening. He received a BA in Physics from the University of California - Berkeley and an MA is Physics from the University of Washington. He has worked as a test and integration engineer and a systems and software engineer.

Rabbi Seth Goldstein serves at Temple Beth Hatefiloh (TBH, in Olympia Washington). He graduated from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 2003, and also holds an MA in Jewish Studies from the Jewish Theological Seminary and a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from the University of Washington. He served as President of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association. He has completed the Clergy Leadership Program of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, is a Rabbis Without Borders fellow and was a Brickner Rabbinic Fellow through the Religious Action Center. He was a member of the third cohort of the Clergy Leadership Incubator program, and was named as one of “America’s Most Inspiring Rabbis” by the Forward in 2016. Most recently he earned three units of Clinical Pastoral Education. Rabbi Goldstein is the author of numerous published articles, essays, liturgy, and poetry, and has been quoted in major news outlets. He writes regularly on his blog, Rabbi 360 and has produced both a weekly podcast, Torah tl;dr, and a webseries, Carpooling with Rabbi. Most recently he creates Jewish content on TikTok. He is deeply engaged in local community affairs and active in Interfaith Works of Thurston County and the Faith Action Network, a statewide advocacy organization. He has testified in front of the Washington State Legislature on numerous occasions. (This bio quotes directly from the resource offered from the website of TBH.)

Shmuel Gonzales is a Mexican-American punk and ḥasid, of Sephardic Bnei Anusim roots. He shares his transcriptions of Jewish liturgy here at the Open Siddur; with the bulk of his work dedicated to the preservation and proliferation the historic liturgical texts of the Sephardic, Mizraḥi and the ḤaBaD Lubavitch Nusach ARI z”l traditions. His divrei torah are available via his blog, Hardcore Mesorah, Since the mid-1990s Shmuel has served as lay leader and shaliaḥ tsibur for several communities across the Los Angeles Eastside, while doing kiruv (Jewish outreach) and teaching Jewish education throughout the inner-city in working-class communities. He is the founder of the Boyle Heights Chavurah – a grassroots Jewish community in East Los Angeles. He is also a community organizer, serving Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE) and was elected as President of the Boyle Heights Neighborhood Council. He is privileged to be recognized as a renowned professional historian, as founder of Boyle Heights History Studios (& Tours) and author of the Barrio Boychik Blog. He is a proud volunteer for the Pico Union Project, which has successfully transformed the oldest synagogue building in Los Angeles into a thriving community center under the leader of famed musician and Cantor Craig Taubman; which is serving as a model for renewing vibrancy for older historic Jewish communities in what are today’s BIPOC landscapes.

Avrum Goodblatt, a senior technology and management consultant, was the co-founder in 1989 of what is now the oldest Jewishly oriented service accessible through the Internet, Shamash (formerly, the New York-Israel Project of Nysernet). He was also project manager for Sadarit, the first PC Hebrew desktop publishing program.

Dr. Ami Goodman is a pediatrician and neonatologist with Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Francisco.

Rabbi Felipe Goodman is the spiritual leader of Temple Beth Sholom in Las Vegas, Nevada, a position he has held since 1998. Born in Mexico City, Mexico in 1967, Rabbi Goodman was previously assistant Rabbi at Mexico City's Comunidad Bet-El de Mexico, one of the largest conservative synagogues in Latin America. He is a member of the Executive Committee of The Rabbinical Assembly and the AIPAC National Leadership Council, and also served as president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern Nevada. Rabbi Goodman is actively involved in numerous national and international Jewish organizations and has visited The White House on two occasions to discuss issues related to the Jewish community and the state of Israel. Rabbi Goodman co-authored the most widely distributed Pesach Haggadah of the Conservative Movement in Latin America, and is also writing a book called Torah from Sin City.

Nehemia Gordon holds a Masters Degree in Biblical Studies and a Bachelors Degree in Archaeology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He translated texts contained in The Dead Sea Scrolls Reader, was an assistant on the Dead Sea Scrolls Publication Project coordinated by Emanuel Tov, and worked as a researcher on the Hebrew University Bible Project under the auspices of Shemaryahu Talmon. Gordon has lived in Jerusalem since 1993, is the author of a series of popular books on the history of ancient Judaism and Christianity, and hosts the Hebrew Voices podcast.

Rabbi Esteban Gottfried is a Director, Playwright and actor and is the leader of Beit Tefilah Israeli (The Israeli House of Prayer) in Tel Aviv, which he founded with Rani Jaeger, and other friends.

Lauren Grabelle Herrmann serves as the rabbi for SAJ – Judaism That Stands for All in Manhattan. She is a member of T’ruah: the Rabbinic call for Human Rights, the co-chair of the Rabbinic Council for JFREJ, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. Rabbi Herrmann is an active clergy member of New Sanctuary Coalition, an organization that fights for immigrants at risk for detention and deportation in NYC. She has been active champion of LGBTQ rights within and beyond the Jewish community, from her days as an intern at CBST, the world’s largest synagogue for LGBTQ individuals, family and and friends until today. In 2017, Rabbi Lauren organized the “Yes to Love, No to Hate: Interfaith Solidarity, Hope and Action” in response to the white supremacist march in Charlottesville, VA that gathered over 600 New Yorkers and brought together over 70 sponsoring organizations. In 2018, Rabbi Lauren participated in a mass mobilization and human rights mission to San Diego to support immigrants at the border. She is a proud alumni of the AJWS Global Justice Fellowship. Before coming to SAJ, Rabbi Lauren was the founder of Kol Tzedek, an inclusive, dynamic and growing synagogue in West Philadelphia. She was also a founding clergy member of POWER, Philadelphians Organized to Witness, Empower and Rebuild. She graduated from The Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, graduating in 2006 and was the recipient of the Lillian Fern Award for Service to the Community and the Rabbi Kenneth and Aviva Berger Memorial Prize in Practical Rabbinics. She is a proud of Alumni of JOIN, the Jewish Organizing Initiative and Network and Rabbis Without Borders.

A graduate of Columbia University, Rabbi Rachel Grant Meyer was ordained by HUC-JIR in New York. Prior to rabbinical school, Rabbi Meyer worked as a Program Associate in the KESHER: College Department at the URJ. After ordination, Rabbi Meyer served as Assistant Rabbi at Congregation Rodeph Sholom in New York City. In June 2015, Rabbi Meyer joined HIAS, the world’s oldest, and only Jewish, refugee resettlement organization, as the Director of Education for Community Engagement. At HIAS, she develops educational materials, resources, and programs that educate American Jews about refugee issues, connecting the plight of contemporary refugees to Jewish values and history. Rabbi Meyer’s writing has been featured in the Forward online and in the upcoming book Seven Days, Many Voices: Insights into the Biblical Story of Creation (CCAR Press). (bio via the Jewish Women's Archive)

Yakov Green is a long-time participant in the pluralistic Beit Midrash Elul in Jerusalem. He lives with his wife Rinat in Ramat Shilo.

Irving Yitzchak Greenberg (born 1933), also known as Yitz Greenberg, is an American scholar, author and rabbi. He is known as a strong supporter of Israel, and a promoter of greater understanding between Judaism and Christianity.

Rabbi Mendy Greenberg, from Anchorage, Alaska, is the ḤaBaD emisary and Director of the Mat-Su Jewish Center, Chabad-Lubavitch, in Palmer, Alaska.

Rabbi Yosef Greenberg serves as the spiritual leader of Alaska Jewish Campus and the president of the Alaska Jewish Museum. Born in Russia, Rabbi Greenberg lived in Israel before moving to the United States. From the age of 17, he studied for ten years in Crown Heights. During 1983-1984, Rabbi Greenberg studied at a small yeshiva headed by Rabbi Sholom Ber Levitin who had long time contacts with the Alaska Jewish community. In 1990, he moved permanently to Alaska to serve the Anchorage Jewish community.

Todd Greenberg is co-President/owner of a Flooring Company here in Boulder County Colorado. He is a member of Congregation Har Hashem in Boulder, Colorado.

Steven Greenberg (born June 19, 1956) is an American rabbi with a smiḥah from Yeshiva University (RIETS). Greenberg is executive director of Eshel, whose mission is to create community and acceptance for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Jews and their families in Orthodox communities. He is also a Senior Teaching Fellow and Director of Diversity Project at CLAL – the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, and the author of the book Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition which received the Koret Jewish Book Award for Philosophy and Thought in 2005. The first openly gay Orthodox Jewish rabbi, he came out as gay in an article in the Israeli newspaper Maariv in 1999. He also contributed to the acclaimed 2001 documentary by Sandi Simcha DuBowski 'Trembling Before G-d.'"

Rabbi David Greene is Co-Founder & Executive Director of Chabad of Southern Minnesota.

Sarah Groner is an Israel Program Associate with J Street with experience in resource development and community social work. Sarah has a breadth of knowledge in the Israeli nonprofit community and an international perspective in resource development. Sarah has worked and volunteered for various Israeli nonprofit organizations, including Tebeka, HIAS, Ofek Liyladenu, Maagalei Tzedek and Mesila. Originally from the United States, Sarah moved to Israel in 2005 and has since completed her Bachelors degree in Social Work at Bar Ilan University.

Joshua Gruenberg is the senior rabbi of Congregation Chizuk Amuno in Baltimore, MD. A native of New Rochelle, N.Y, he earned his bachelor’s degree in political science from the State University of New York-Binghamton. He graduated from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2002 and served as director of Judaic studies at the Schechter School of Long Island in New York. In 2004, he became the spiritual leader of Congregation Sons of Israel in Nyack, N.Y., and served there for seven years before coming to Congregation Beth El Yardley, Pennsylvania.

Die Grünen Bundesarbeitsgruppe "Mensch und Tier" (The Greens National Working Group on People and Animals) was established by the West German Green Party to draft policy papers and the party platforms concerning animal protection.

Judy Gumbo is the author of Yippie Girl, a memoir in progress about love and conflict among the Youth International Party and other romantic revolutionaries of the late 1960s. With her late husband Stew Albert, Judy co-authored The Sixties Papers: Documents of a Rebellious Decade (1984). In her later life, Judy was an award winning fundraiser for Planned Parenthood. She now lives in Berkeley, California with her husband, David Dobkin

Leon Gunther has been on the Physics Department faculty at Tufts University since 1965. He got his PhD in Physics from MIT in 1964 and has published over 100 articles, the vast majority being in the field of Condensed Matter Theory. Having begun studies of the violin at the age of seven, he has played in numerous Community Symphony Orchestras, most notably the Newton Symphony, where he was the principal second violinist for ten years, from 1974-1984. In 1994, he founded the community chorus of Temple Emunah in Lexington, MA, known as the Mak'haylah. Programs include music of a wide range of genres - folk, liturgical, and classical. His compositions and arrangements include Hebrew renditions of three movements of the Brahms Requiem.

Chajm ist Autor und Bewohner des Ruhrgebiets, Herausgeber von talmud.de und Organisator des Minchah-Schiurs im Ruhrgebiet. Einige seiner Artikel gibt es nicht nur im Internet, sondern beispielsweise auch in der »Jüdischen Allgemeinen«. Über die Kontakt-Seite kann man Chajm eine Nachricht senden.

Rabbi Dr. Joshua Gutoff was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary, and later received a Doctorate in Jewish Education there, writing on Talmud education and the development of the moral imagination. A writer and teacher, he lives in Philadelphia.

​Leslie Yale Gutterman, is Rabbi Emeritus of Temple Beth-El, Providence, Rhode Island, having served from 1970 to 2015, upon his ordination from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. In 1974 when Rabbi William G. Braude retired, Rabbi Gutterman became the synagogue's senior rabbi. A 1964 graduate of the University of Michigan, Rabbi Gutterman has been involved with dozens of civic organizations and has served as a board member of many preeminent institutions including: Butler Hospital, The Rhode Island Telecommunications Commission, The Providence Athenaeum, Hospice Care, Rhode Island Kids Count, Trinity Repertory Theatre, Interfaith Health Care Ministries, Brown University's Board of Religious Overseers, and Bryant University. Rabbi Gutterman was president of the Rhode Island Board of Rabbis, the Jewish Family Service and the national Rabbinic Alumni Association of Reform Judaism as well as the Rhode Island Committee for the Humanities. He has served on the executive board of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and taught at Providence College. For 20 years, Rabbi Gutterman wrote a monthly column for the religion page of The Providence Journal. He received a public service award from the City of Providence on its 350th anniversary and the lifetime achievement award from the Rhode Island Council of Churches and in 2012 he was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame. Rabbi Gutterman was awarded a Doctor of Divinity degree from Hebrew Union College and holds honorary degrees from the University of Rhode Island, Roger Williams University, Johnson & Wales University, Providence College, Rhode Island College and Bryant University.

Amit Gvaryahu is a faculty member of Yeshivat Hadar, the Drisha Insitute and Yeshivat Talpiot in Jerusalem. He is an alum of Yeshivat Hadar, Yeshivat Har Etzion and the Hebrew University, from which he graduated with a degree in Talmud and Classics. He is also Graduate student at the Hebrew University, where he taught Talmud for three years. He is married to Yedidah Koren.

The Em haBanim is a transfeminine neo-Chassid. מוֹשִׁיבִי עֲקֶרֶת הַבַּיִת אֵם הַבָּנִים שְׂמֵחָה הַלְלוּ יָ-הּ

Bonna Devora Haberman (1960-2015) is the author of Israeli Feminism Liberating Judaism: Blood and Ink and ReReading Israel: The Spirit of the Matter, National Jewish Book Award finalist. Dr. Haberman has taught at Harvard, Brandeis and Hebrew universities. In Jerusalem, she initiated Women of the Wall, a 25 year strong movement for women's full participation and leadership of public religious practice. Dr. Haberman earned her doctorate in Ethics and Education at the University of London. Having grown up in Canada, studied in the USA, Israel, and England, her work in and out of the academy fuses critical interpretation of texts and culture with passion for social betterment. She has published widely and taught at the Hebrew University, at the Harvard University Divinity School and at Brandeis University where she founded and directed the “Mistabra Institute for Jewish Textual Activism” – addressing difficult texts and social problems using performance arts. With Mistabra, she created and performed two full-length theater pieces, Inner Fire—about Jewish peoplehood, Israel, and territory, and Unmasking Esther. She studied with Augusto Boal, the Brazilian founder of Theater of the Oppressed. Dr. Haberman passed away in June 2015.

Hadar Institute (Mechon Hadar) is the umbrella organization for Yeshivat Hadar, the first full-time egalitarian yeshiva in North America. Hadar programming intends to empower Jews creating passionate and vibrant Jewish learning communities committed to religious and spiritual growth and textual fluency invTaNaKh, Midrash, Talmud, Halakha, liturgy, and theology. Hadar's community grants support individualized projects and social justice initiatives which students take home to their local communities.

Halachic Left, founded April 2024, is a grassroots movement of halachically-observant Jews organizing in opposition to Jewish supremacy in their communities, supporting the end of the Israeli military control and occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and working for a just and equitable future for Israelis and Palestinians.

חיים היימס-עזרא (Dr. Chaim Hames-Ezra) is the Chair of the History Department, Ben Gurion University of the Negev and the author of I (do not) Believe: Israel and Judaism – Past, Present, Future (in Hebrew, Ktav 2011).

Jill Hammer is the Director of Spiritual Education at the Academy for Jewish Religion. Jill is the author of two books: “Sisters at Sinai: New Tales of Biblical Women” (JPS, 01) and “The Jewish Book of Days: A Companion for All Seasons” (JPS, 06). She is the co-founder of the Kohenet Institute, a program in Jewish women's spiritual leadership. An essayist, poet, midrashist and ritualist, her work has been in publications including Zeek Magazine, The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, The Torah: A Women's Commentary, The Forward, The Jewish Spectator, and Lilith as well as on-line on many websites. Several of her divrei torah can be heard on soundcloud, thanks to the Romemu congregation.

Eytan Hammerman is rabbi at the Jewish Community Center of Harrison, N.Y.. He had previously served Temple Beth Shalom, Mahopac N.Y. A graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS). He also holds a Masters Degree from JTS in Jewish Studies with a concentration in Jewish History. A native of Toms River, NJ and a graduate of the Solomon Schechter Day School, Rabbi Hammerman was an active USY and Ramah participant and Youth Leader. He is a graduate of Columbia University (’99) with a degree in Political Science and holds a B.A with “Honors and Distinction” from List College of the Jewish Theological Seminary. He has been a visiting student at Union Theological Seminary, New York, and the Hebrew University and the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, Israel.

Stephen Mo Hanan Kaplan (b. 1947, Washington, D.C.) is a Tony-nominated actor and playwright. Beginning his career as a San Francisco based street performer, he created and performed the role of Gus the Theatre Cat in the early 1970s run of Cats. In 1975, ACT produced his play about King David, David Dances as part of their Plays in Progress series. He is also known for his roles in Malcolm X (1992), NET Playhouse (1964) and The Pirates of Penzance (1983), among other works.

Shelby Handler (they/them) is a writer and teaching artist living on Duwamish land/Seattle, WA. Currently, they are an MFA candidate at the University of Washington. While in school, Shelby is going to keep spending all their spare time teaching 4th grade Jewish weirdos and splintering white supremacy through organizing, study, ritual and pedagogy.

Rabbi Shea Harlig (1965- ), of Brooklyn, New York, is a shaliaḥ of the Chabad Lubavitch. He and his wife founded Chabad of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas, Nevada in 1990.

Sheldon Mayer Harnick (born April 30, 1924) is an American lyricist and songwriter best known for his collaborations with composer Jerry Bock on musicals such as Fiddler on the Roof.

Neriah Haroeh is a lawyer in Israel.

Yagel Haroush is a singer, a kamancheh and ney player, a poet, a composer of piyutim (traditional religious songs) and a teacher of Middle Eastern music. After completing his studies at the Jerusalem Academy of Music, Yagel earned a master’s degree in philosophy at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and was awarded the Daoud Al-Kuwaiti Scholarship for musical excellence. Yagel specializes in performing and composing music based on maqam, the Middle Eastern modal system. He studied the Persian form of maqam, known as dastgah, with Prof. Piris Eliyahu and his son Mark Eliyahu, and Arab maqam with Prof. Taiseer Elias. As a child, he absorbed the liturgical poetic tradition of the Moroccan piyut (religious song) at his grandfather’s home in the southern Israeli city of Dimona, where every Shabbat, a group of paytanim (composers and singers of piyutim) would gather. Later, he delved into the secrets of the baqashot (“supplications”), a Sephardic mystical singing tradition practiced by Moroccan Jews. Yagel’s ensemble, Shir Yididot, performs original reinterpretations of this tradition that situate the baqashot within the broader context of Middle Eastern mystical song. The group released its debut album in 2016. Yagel is also the founder of the Study Center for Makam and Piyut, where he teaches composition and
performance, as well as theoretical performance studies based on Jewish sources – philosophy, Kabbalah and Midrash. He also founded the School of Oriental Music in the Negev in the town of Yeruham, and Kedem, a school for composition in the spirit of maqam in Jerusalem.

Rabbi Barnett Hasden is an Orthodox rabbi and mashgiaḥ in the United States. He has served pulpits in Ontatrio (Shaarey Shomayim), Connecticut, and Brooklyn, New York. He is the mashgiaḥ for Ner Tamid K in Staten Island, New York. (We know little more about Rabbi Hasden or his career. Help us honor him with additional details by contacting us.)

Havayah is a ḥavurah which meets in the Northside neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. Founded in 2015, it is the city's only urban, egalitarian, intentional Jewish community.

HIAS (founded as the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) is an American nonprofit organization that provides humanitarian aid and assistance to refugees. The organization works with people whose lives and freedom are believed to be at risk due to war, persecution, or violence. HIAS has offices in the United States and across Latin America, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Since its inception, HIAS has helped resettle more than 4.5 million people.

Shea Hecht is the chairman of the board of the National Committee for the Furtherance of Jewish Education and a leading Chabad rabbi. He is the son of the late Rabbi Jacob J. Hecht, a close confidant of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, R' Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Currently, he is a dean at Hadar Hatorah Yeshiva in Brooklyn, NY, a Lubavitch Baal Teshuvah yeshiva, as well as a faculty member of the Ivy League Torah Study Program. He also served as the spiritual leader of the Seaview Jewish Center in Canarsie, Brooklyn.

Rabbi Nava Hefetz is the Director of Education for Rabbis for Human Rights, Israel. In her role, she works with Israeli communities to expose them to the reality of the Occupation, examining its repercussions from a Jewish-universal standpoint. Nava also coordinates an Israeli-Palestinian women's group that meets in Jerusalem.

Rabbi Shai Held is Co-Founder, Dean and Chair in Jewish Thought at Mechon Hadar. Before that, he served for six years as Scholar-in-Residence at Kehilat Hadar in New York City, and taught both theology and Halakha at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He also served as Director of Education at Harvard Hillel. A renowned lecturer and educator, Shai is a 2011 recipient of the Covenant Award for excellence in Jewish education. He has taught for institutions such as Drisha, Me'ah, Combined Jewish Philanthropies, and the Rabbinic Training Institute, and currently serves on the faculty of the Wexner Heritage program. Shai has a PhD in religion from Harvard; his main academic interests are in modern Jewish and Christian thought and in the history of Zionism. His book, Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence was published by Indiana University Press in the fall of 2013

Kathryn Hellerstein is Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, specializing in Yiddish, and the Ruth Meltzer Director of the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania.

Melila Hellner-Eshed, Ph.D., is a Research Fellow of the Kogod Research Center at Shalom Hartman Institute and the Director of Maskilot, an intensive two-year program for female doctoral candidates, now opening its fourth cohort. She also founded and co-directs the Rabbinic Students Seminar, a interdenominational program for rabbinic students spending a year in Israel. She has been a professor of Jewish mysticism and Zohar in the Department of Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem for over two decades. She received her degree from Hebrew University under the tutelage of Professor Yehuda Liebes. At the Hebrew University, Melila also taught in the honors teacher-training program Revivim and in the Amirim honors program for liberal studies. For the past three decades, she has been a central figure in the Israeli renaissance of study of Jewish texts by Israeli adults of all paths of life in various frameworks. She has been teaching and working with Jewish communities in North America, Europe and the former Soviet Union for many years. Her publications include A River Flows from Eden: The Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar, (Hebrew, Alma and Am Oved Publications, 2005 and English, Stanford University Press, 2009). Her book  Seekers of the Face  – From the Secrets of the Idra Rabba in the Zohar was published in Hebrew in 2018, forthcoming in English from Stanford University Press. Melila also serves on the faculty of the Institute of Jewish Spirituality in the U.S. and is active in the ‘Sulha’ – a reconciliation project that brings together Israelis and Palestinians.

Shmuel Herzfeld (born October 9, 1974) is an American Modern Orthodox rabbi. He heads Ohev Shalom Synagogue in Washington, DC. He is a teacher, lecturer, activist, and author.

Rabbi Joui Hessel, RJE, is the Associate Director, Eastern Region for Recruitment and Admissions. She previously served as Certificate Program Educator of the Certificate Program in Jewish Education Specializing in Adolescents and Emerging Adults. Before coming to HUC-JIR, Rabbi Hessel served Washington Hebrew Congregation first as a pulpit rabbi and then as Rabbi and Director of Religious Education and Jewish Engagement. She received an M.A. in Jewish Education from the Rhea Hirsch School of Education in 1998 and was ordained from the New York campus of the College-Institute in 2001. She earned her B.A. in Secondary School Education from The University of Georgia. Rabbi Hessel co-authored The Hanukkah Family Treasury, published by Running Hill Press. She has been published in the CCAR’s recent publication The Sacred Encounter (2014), in Moment Magazine (June 2007) and in a book on parenting young adult children, Mom, Can I Move Back in with You: A Survival Guide for Parents of Twentysomethings, published by Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium.

Rabbi Marvin (Moshe Chaim) Hier (born 1939 in New York City) is the dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, its Museum of Tolerance and of Moriah, the Center's film division.

Nurit Hirschfeld-Skupinsky (span class="hebrew">נורית הירשפלד סקופינסקי) of Kibbutz Naḥal Oz is a professor of midrash.

Anat Hochberg is a professional musician, music teacher, and Jewish educator. She is currently a fellow of Yeshivat Hadar 2017-18.

Lawrence A. Hoffman (born 1942) is an American Reform rabbi and a prominent scholar of Jewish liturgy. Hoffman is a Professor of Liturgy at Hebrew Union College in New York City. He is a prolific author, with two separate books to his name that are used as liturgical guides. His writing examines means of improving the quality of praying for secular Jews. He has explored issues of liturgical change, but is most interested in the "community at prayer"—human and divine relationships in prayer. Hoffman is co-founder and "intellectual visionary" of the Synagogue 3000 institute, an independent non-profit based in Los Angeles which runs leadership-training programs and directs the rituals of more than 100 synagogues across North America.

Rabbi Evan Hoffman is the Spiritual Leader of Congregation Anshe Sholom in New Rochelle, NY. He previously served as Assistant Rabbi of Park East Synagogue in Manhattan. A graduate of Yeshiva College (summa cum laude), he received semikhah from RIETS, earned an M.A. in Modern Jewish History from the Bernard Revel Graduate School and did advanced graduate research in American Jewish History. For many years he has taught adult education courses in Jewish Theology and Jewish History at synagogues around the metro area. Rabbi Hoffman is the author of a widely disseminated weekly essay series titled “Thoughts on the Parashah.”

Rabbi David Hoffman is the president of The Honey Foundation for Israel.

Elisabeth Hollender is Professor of Jewish Studies at Goethe University in Frankfurt. An expert on medieval Ashkenazic poetry and poetics, she published Piyyut Commentary in Medieval Ashkenaz (2008).

Born in 1971, Rabbi Benyamin Holtzman is a graduate of Yeshivat Har Etzion, and received semicha from the Israel Rabbinate. He has served as Rabbi of Kibbutz Ma’ale Gilboa since 2001.

Rabbi Peter E. Hyman, MAHL, DD, is the spiritual leader of Temple B’nai Israel. A native of Connecticut, Rabbi Hyman came to Easton after serving congregations in Pennsylvania, Texas and Florida. Rabbi Hyman graduated from the Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1977 and was ordained in 1980. In 2005, he received an honorary Doctor of Divinity from the Hebrew Union College. Involved with all aspects of synagogue life and community relations, Rabbi Hyman has a passion for teaching, a deep love of Torah and a commitment to share the wisdom and beauty of Judaism with all those he encounters. Rabbi Hyman has received many awards from religious and community groups, including the Union for Reform Judaism’s Belin Award for Outreach Program Excellence, and the Silver Buffalo Distinguished Service Award from the Boy Scouts of America.

Ya'qub Ibn Yusuf is the proprietor of Olam Qatan bookstore in South Jerusalem. A really wonderful story of his personal journey can be found on youtube, here.

IfNotNow is a call to action in the Jewish community to stand together for freedom and dignity for all people; to end our support for the Occupation.

Rabbi Me'irah Iliinsky was ordained at Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 2007, after a career as a clinical social worker. She is also an artist, with a mission to give visual access to sacred texts. Her areas of expertise are working with elders, and Jewish approaches to end of life. She teaches parashat ha-shavua at the JCC in San Francisco, and is the community rabbi at Rhoda Goldman plaza, also in San Francisco.

Andy Izenson is an Associate Attorney with Diana Adams Law & Mediation, and is a passionate advocate for queer and nontraditional families and for trans and gender-nonconforming youth.

Rabbi Walter Jacob (b. 1930) in Augsburg, Germany, is a prominent Reform movement rabbi in the United States and Germany. Rabbi Jacob founded and was the first chairperson of the Solomon B. Freehof Institute for Progressive Halakhah and of the Associated American Jewish Museums, which organizes free art exhibits for synagogues and Jewish centers. He emigrated to the United States in 1940, narrowly avoiding the Holocaust in Europe. He received his BA from Drury College (Springfield, Missouri, 1950) and ordination and an M.H.L. from Hebrew Union College in 1955. Immediately following, he was named assistant rabbi at Rodef Shalom Congregation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, under Rabbi Solomon Freehof. He served as a chaplain in the U.S. Air Force in the Philippines during the years 1955–57. He earned his D.H.L. in 1961 from HUC-JIR. In 1966, Jacob succeeded Freehof as senior rabbi, becoming emeritus in 1997. He was adjunct professor at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary (1968–74). He took a leading role in interfaith dialogue with his book Christianity through Jewish Eyes (1974, 2007) which brought him into a close friendship with Cardinal John Wright and Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl. He was president of the Religious Education Association of America (1981–85) Jacob served the Reform movement in the United States as president of CCAR (1991–93). His interest and expertise in Jewish law led him to serve as chairman of the Responsa Committee of the CCAR (1974–1990). and chairman of the International Responsa Committee of the World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ). He served as president of the Religious Education Association of the United States (1981–85). He and his wife (Irène Jacob) established the largest Biblical Botanical Garden in North America in 1986 and published in that field. He also wrote on interfaith issues. Jacob served as overseer of HUC-JIR, Vice-President of the World Union for Progressive Judaism (1990–94), and chairman of the Publications Committee of Hebrew Union College Press (1976–1999). As CCAR president, he emphasized a broader Reform interpretation of the halakhah. As the sixteenth generation of rabbis, he has continued the work of Benno Jacob's biblical commentaries. Jacob has published 43 books and more than twelve hundred essays, sermons, and monographs on a range of topics which include responsa, Jewish theology, biblical studies, interfaith dialogue, modern Jewish problems, and gardening together with his wife, Irene Jacob. He received a D.D. from Drury College in 1990. Also in 1990, he along with a small group re-established Liberal Judaism in Germany. For several years he served as the Honorary Liberal Rabbi of Munich, Germany and in 1998 was co-founder of the Abraham Geiger College, the first rabbinic seminary in Central Europe since the Holocaust in Berlin/Potsdam. He continues as its President and has ordained six classes. He was made a Knight Commander of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1999 and received the Commander of the Equestrian Order of St. Gregory the Great from Pope John Paul II in 2004. The city of Augsburg honored him with a special award in 2014.

Rabbi Jill Jacobs is the Executive Director of T’ruah. She is the author of Where Justice Dwells: A Hands-On Guide to Doing Social Justice in Your Jewish Community and There Shall Be No Needy: Pursuing Social Justice through Jewish Law and Tradition, both published by Jewish Lights. Rabbi Jacobs has been named three times to the Forward’s list of 50 influential American Jews, to Newsweek’s list of the 50 Most Influential Rabbis in America, and to the Jerusalem Post’s 2013 list of “Women to Watch.” She holds rabbinic ordination and an MA in Talmud from the Jewish Theological Seminary, where she was a Wexner Fellow; an MS in Urban Affairs from Hunter College, and a BA from Columbia University. She is also a graduate of the Mandel Institute Jerusalem Fellows Program.

Rabbi Cheryl Jacobs is Director of ISH, a spiritual source and service that provides comfort, community, education, celebration and growth rooted in Jewish wisdom. She also serves as the as well as a Chaplain for the Hollywood, Florida Police Department. Rabbi Jacobs served Director of the Jewish Healing Center at Jewish Family Service of Broward County and Assistant Rabbi at Temple Kol Ami Emanu-El in Plantation, Florida. Rabbi Cheryl was ordained as a Rabbi by The Jewish Theological Seminary and holds an MA from Yale University and a BA from Hobart-William Smith.

Mark X. Jacobs was the Founding Executive Director of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL, from 1994 to 2003). Under his leadership, COEJL grew from a short-term project of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment into a permanent coalition of 29 national Jewish agencies with affiliated institutions across North America. Mark X. Jacobs currently serves as a Senior Mediator and Program Manager at the Meridian Institute, where he designs and facilitates collaborative processes that help diverse parties identify critical issues, build relationships and trust, construct innovative solutions, and implement durable decisions. Mark is currently focused on multistakeholder efforts to address challenges at the intersection of agriculture, environment, and public policy.

Nathaniel Jacobs is a student at Brandeis University.

Rabbi Abby Jacobson serves the community of Emmanuel Synagogue in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Rabbanit Bracha Jaffe is a proud graduate of Yeshivat Maharat, following her soul after a career in hi-tech. Equally at home in Israel and in the US, she feels honored to be a member of the clergy team at the Bayit.

Rabbi Marisa Elana James is a graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and a long-time member of the CBST community. Before rabbinical school, Marisa was a college English teacher, competitive ballroom dancer, insurance broker, student pilot, bookstore manager, and professional Torah reader. As a teenager growing up in Connecticut, she was a co-founder of her high school’s GSA, the second to be founded in the state. While living in Jerusalem for more than five years, Marisa worked for Encounter Programs, taught Introduction to Judaism classes in Jerusalem and Bethlehem, studied at a wide variety of schools (including Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, secular, and non-Jewish settings), and helped create and lead the rabbinical student program for T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, where she most recently worked. Marisa has also taught English at the University of Connecticut and Rutgers, and acted as cantor for communities in Israel and America.

Jewish Democratic Women for Action (JDWA), founded in 2021, is a large, diverse network of Jewish women in the United States volunteering to help the Biden-Harris administration build back better.

The Jewish Labor Committee was formed in February, 1934, by Yiddish-speaking immigrant trade union leaders. In the beginning the purpose was to rescue Jews and Trade Unionists from certain death at the hands of Nazis. The JLC’s leadership helped secure U.S. visas for 2000 union leaders and their families in Eastern Europe, France, Germany, Italy, Austria and Belgium. The JLC also raised almost $300,000 to buy weapons that were smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto. Following the war, the Jewish Labor Committee helped settle refugees and helped them find jobs and set up a Holocaust education program. In 1951 the Jewish Labor Committee, through the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), became the official the voice of labor in the Jewish community, speaking in the name of 500,000 North American workers. It was also the voice of the Jewish community in the labor community. After World War II, the JLC focused more on domestic issues, such as anti-discrimination, desegregation and civil rights, the Grape boycott, and the development of trade union human rights programs. It has also worked to protect Soviet Jewry. The JLC organizes support for Israel among the labor community.More recently the National Jewish Labor Committee has focused on the Hyatt Hotel Boycott, supporting Walmart workers as they demand respect and decent working conditions, and immigration reform.

The Jewish Language Project, an initiative of HUC-JIR, promotes research on, awareness about, and engagement surrounding the many languages spoken and written by Jews throughout history and around the world. They accomplish this by recording interviews and songs by native speakers, sharing unique content on social media, and producing high-quality online events that both teach about and celebrate Jewish languages. They convene the Jewish Language Consortium, a group of ten partner organizations with the shared mission of Jewish language preservation and education.

The Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America (also referred to as the Jewish War Veterans of the U.S.A., the Jewish War Veterans, or JWV) is an American Jewish veterans' organization created in 1896 by American Civil War veterans to raise awareness of contributions made by Jewish service members. (JWV holds a Congressional charter under Title 36 of the United States Code.) The organization has an estimated 15,000 members, ranging from World War Ⅱ to current conflicts and active duty personnel. It is the oldest active national veterans' service organization in America.

Rabbi Dr. Seth (Avi) Kadish teaches medieval Jewish philosophy, history and Bible at Oranim Academic College of Education and in the Overseas School at the University of Haifa. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Haifa (2006), and previously studied at Yeshiva University (where he earned rabbinic ordination and master’s degrees in Bible and Jewish Education). For many years he also taught immigrant soldiers in the Nativ program of the IDF education corps, and adult Israeli Jewish education for the Hebrew University’s Melton School. He lives in Kiryat Motzkin, Israel with his wife and children. He has helped build modern Orthodox Israeli communities that are meant to be open and welcoming to the entire public. Rabbi Kadish is the author of Kavvana: Directing the Heart in Jewish Prayer and The Book of Abraham: Rabbi Shimon ben Zemah Duran and the School of Rabbenu Nissim Gerondi.

Daniel Kahn is a Berlin-based Yiddish singer and songwriter.

Ze'ev Kainan is the CEO of Mosad Bialik Publishing House. Ze'ev was the CEO of Keren Malki - an Israeli nonprofit organization that assists families of children with special needs, and the director of education and special projects at Tikvatenu Centers network. Ze'ev worked for years with youth and was a delegate to the Ramah camps (California, Canada, Poconos, and the Ramah Seminar in Israel) as well as other JCC camps. From 1997 to 2000, he served as a central emissary for the USY movement in North America, on behalf of the Jewish Agency. He later served as the director of the youth movement of the Masorti Movement in Israel for seven years and is also the editor of the siddur va'Ani Tefillati - Siddur Yisraeli and the Poteach Sha'ar Machzor for the High Holidays of the Masorti Movement. Ze'ev was born and raised in the religious kibbutz of Sa'ad in the northern Negev, three kilometers east of Gaza City and now lives in Jerusalem with his wife, Dr. Lisa Kainan and their three children - all graduates of Noam.

David Zvi Kalman is a Fellow in Residence at Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, where he is also a member of the inaugural cohort of North American David Hartman Center Fellows. David Zvi leads the Kogod Research Center’s Theology research team. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, where he writes on Jewish law, the history of technology, and Islamic jurisprudence. He is the owner of Print-O-Craft Press and executive director of Jewish Public Media.

Rabbi Zac Kamenetz, based in Berkeley, California, is the founder and CEO of Shefa: Jewish psychedelic support, and a co-founder of the Jewish Psychedelic Summit. He holds an MA in Biblical literature and languages from UC Berkeley and the Graduate Theological Union. and received rabbinic ordination in 2012. He is a qualified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) instructor,

Benj Kamm is a Boston-area systems analyst. His projects in the Jewish world have included working for Encounter in Jerusalem, and co-chairing and teaching at the National Havurah Committee Summer Institute, Jews in the Woods, the Kavod Jewish Social Justice house, and Hillel at Brown University. Benj plays guitar and banjo and enjoys learning piyyutim (Jewish liturgical poetry) from across Jewish history and ethnic traditions.

Kanisse is an egalitarian and inclusive community for all who wish to celebrate the rich and diverse heritage of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry through its liturgy, traditions, and culture. We host prayer services and events for Jewish holidays and Shabbatot in New York City and worldwide via livestream. We also publish and curate inclusive liturgical texts, as well as an online directory that seeks to foster connection between like-minded leaders and organizations.

Annie Kantar Ben-Hillel is a poet, translator, and teacher of writing, language, and literature. She is the director of the English Studies Program at Shalem College. The recipient of an American Academy of Poets Prize and Fulbright Scholarship, her English translation of the poet Leah Goldberg’s book With This Night (University of Texas Press, 2011) was short-listed for the American Literary Translators Association award. Her poems and translations have appeared in venues such as The American Literary Review, Literary Imagination, Poetry Daily, Rattle, Tikkun, and many others. Along with her work in language instruction, Kantar Ben-Hillel has led creative writing and translation workshops at numerous universities, including Bar-Ilan University, the University of Maryland, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University.

Gabriel Kanter-Webber is rabbi of Brighton and Hove Progressive Synagogue, Sussex, UK. He was born in Kingston-on-Thames. After studying Politics & International Relations at Sussex University, he spent a year as a youth worker for LJY-Netzer, the youth movement of Liberal Judaism, before entering Leo Baeck College to study for the rabbinate. He has served in many congregations as a student, including three years with the York Liberal Jewish Community. With a particular affection for Liberal Jewish communities outside the London centres, Gabriel has a special interest in connecting Jewish values to contemporary events and social justice issues (often in real-time), and is passionate about enabling people to weave Judaism – subtly but strongly – into their everyday lives.

Chaya Kaplan-Lester is a Jerusalem-based spiritual teacher & guide, psychotherapist, and performance artist. She offers private therapy & spiritual counseling in person or via phone and Skype as well as leads spiritual journeys in Israel. As co-director of the Shalev Center for Jewish Personal Growth, Chaya trains and facilitates ongoing women's groups and teaches regular classes in the Jerusalem area and on her annual tours world-wide.

Shalom! My name is Emily Aviva Kapor-Mater. I am a radical transfeminist rabbi and activist. I am an autistic, transgender woman. My rabbinic work focuses on creating innovative yet traditional Jewish law, liturgy, and ritual, in order to celebrate and affirm trans identities and experiences. I also work for acceptance and accessibility for people with visible and invisible disabilities. I am the author of Ein Self: Early Meditations and Haggadah Shir Ge'ulah. My other projects include playing chamber music, advocating for alternative education, computer programming, and smashing systems of institutional oppression.

Retired Navy commander Rabbi Maurice S. Kaprow is a chaplain for VITAS Healthcare, a hospice organization in Central Florida. Rabbi Kaprow served the United States Navy as chaplain for twenty years with visits to some 200 ships.

Having been active in congregations of 3 different Chassidic dynasties (ChaBa”D over the course of a lifetime, Twersky, and Bostoner Rebbe), Rabbi R. Karpov, Ph.D. has for 30+ years been making available traditional liturgical sources’ deep spiritual core, and since the early 1990s translating ceremonial texts of 16th-century Lurianic Kabbalists of Tzfat (Safed), including: Tikkun Leil Shavuoth (ABQ rollout 2013/5773), Tikkun Leil Hoshannah Rabbah, 7 Adar, Leil Sh’vii Shel Pesach (Mishmar—anniversary of crossing the Sea of Reeds); and Tikkun Chatzoth. Ordained by 3 Orthodox-ordained rabbis, Rabbi Karpov maintained a Shomereth Mitzvoth path while serving Conservative pulpits for 7+ years, beginning in 1989 as 1 of the first 10 woman rabbis to serve a solo United Synagogue pulpit. Having in the mid-1980s expanded the Navajo/Jewish dialogue that Dr. Avrum Organick pioneered, she continued to serve the Window Rock centered expanse between Albuquerque, Flagstaff, and the Farmington/Durango area that she helped open up with a 1997 Pesach Seder receiving front-page Durango newspaper coverage. After serving as Traditional Egalitarian synagogue rabbi, founded and served the Window Rock area based Jewish Center(s) of Indian Country, identifying and drawing together ~60+ Jewish family units for Pesach Seders, High Holidays (mechitzah down in front), Purim and Jewish/Native dialogue, while teaching at Navajo Community College/Diné College. Available to run ceremonies.

I am a lactation consultant and freelance writer living in Petach Tikva, Israel. I made aliyah from Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, in 1990. As a teen I babysat for Aharon Varady, the founder of this project, and his sister.

Abe Katz is the director of the Burei HaTefila Institute. The Beurei Hatefila Institute was established in order to encourage the study of the words of the Siddur as a Jewish text in Jewish schools. To assist educators developing courses on Tefila, the Institute publishes a weekly e-mail newsletter in which it traces the sources for the words and structure of the prayers within the Siddur. These and other resources can be downloaded on PDF from the Burei HaTefila Institute website.

Mr. Katz is also available to teach courses on Tefila at your synagogue or Jewish Community Center and as a scholar-in-residence. He is available to meet with school administrators to assist them in establishing a course in Beurei Hatefila at their schools and to train teachers on using Hebrew-English word processing and Judaic libraries on CD-ROM.

Rabbi Elie Kaunfer is co-founder, rosh yeshiva and executive director of Mechon Hadar and on the Talmud faculty at Yeshivat Hadar. A graduate of Harvard College, he was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he also completed an MA and is pursuing a doctorate in liturgy. A Wexner Graduate Fellow, Elie is a co-founder of Kehilat Hadar and in 2009 Newsweek named him one of the top 50 rabbis in America. He was selected as an inaugural AVI CHAI Fellow, and is the author of Empowered Judaism: What Independent Minyanim Can Teach Us About Building Vibrant Jewish Communities (Jewish Lights, 2010).

Rabbi Michal Ratner Ken-Tor serves as the Rabbi of the Megiddo Regional Council and the founder of MEGIDO HARUACH, a new nonprofit organization in Megiddo. She was born in Kibbutz Geva and grew up on Moshav Kfar Yehezkel in the Jezreel Valley, and is the fifth child from a Zionist family who made Aliyah in 1968 from the USA. After her military service as an officer, Michal attended Bar Ilan University where she restudied Education, Political Science and Communications. She continued her education in Jewish Studies at the Schechter Institute where she received her MA. Michal is a graduate of the rabbinical school HUC.

Rabbi Justin Kerber is the rabbi of Congregation Beth Shalom (Carmel, Indiana). After graduating Columbia University, he served as a Sherut La’am Volunteer, mentoring high school seniors at Kibbutz Ramat Yochanan in Israel. Returning to the United States, he completed a law degree from Boston College Law School and following five years in formal rabbinical study at the Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio, received his ordination. He has extensive experience as a Hillel Director, Congregational Rabbi, and Hospital Chaplain.

Emily Kesselman (pen name, Emily K) is a cartoonist and illustrator based in Philadelphia, PA, whose work puts a spotlight on marginalized communities, courageous (often unsung) historical figures, and nerdy pop culture. Projects include webcomics “sad/funny/true” and “places you find cats,” as well as contributions to the anthologies Dirty Diamonds and Votes For Women: The Battle for the 19th Amendment. In addition to updating her online comics, Emily continues working on her original Jewish fantasy graphic novel, The Gathering of Sparks.

Daniel Kieval works with children and families of all ages and trains educators in the curriculum and pedagogy of experiential Jewish environmental education. He joined Teva Learning Center in 2011, having previously taught at the Pearlstone Center's Jewish educational farm and at Glen Helen Outdoor Education Center. Daniel studied Biology at Wesleyan University and Permaculture and Ecovillage Design at Kibbutz Lotan in Israel.

Rabbi Reuven Kimelman is a professor of Classical Judaica at Brandeis University and rabbi of Beth Abraham New England Sephardic Congregation of New England. His forthcoming book is The Rhetoric of Jewish Prayer: A Historical and Literary Commentary on the Daily Prayer Book. His other book is The Mystical Meaning of ‘Lekhah Dodi’ and ‘Kabbalat Shabbat’.

David-Seth Kirshner (born 1973), is the Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, in Closter, New Jersey. Prior to becoming a congregational rabbi, he worked at the Jewish Theological Seminary, which he joined in 1999, serving as Senior Director of Institutional Advancement, overseeing the Seminary's development and outreach efforts. For five years, Kirshner also served as spiritual leader for the Hebrew Congregation of Fitzgerald, in Southern Georgia. (via his entry in Wikipedia).

Dr. Samuel Klausner is an Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. He has continued his lines of research in the Sociology of Religion and in Methodology-Philosophy of Science, applying sociological thought to the clarification of classic documents. Currently, his long range project is a comparison of Hebrew and Muslim dietary systems as a window to their theological presuppositions. He is completing a methodological critique of wissenschaft Bible scholar’s work on interpreting a verse in the Books of Exodus and Deuteronomy.

Fred Klein is Director of Mishkan Miami: The Jewish Connection for Spiritual Support, and serves as Executive Vice President of the Rabbinical Association of Greater Miami. As director of the interdenominational Rabbinical Association of Greater Miami, he provides local spiritual leadership with a voice in communal affairs. Klein is a Miami native and graduated Magna Cum Laude from Brown University with a BA in Religious Studies. He was ordained as a rabbi and holds an MA in Bible from Yeshiva University and an MPhil in Jewish history from Columbia University and was a Wexner Fellow. He is a Board Certified Chaplain and has done clinical rotations at New York Hospital Medical Center of Queens, NY, Jackson Memorial Hospital and VITAS hospice. He is Vice President for the Rabbinic Cabinet of the Jewish Federations of North America, and serves on the Board of the National Association of Jewish Chaplains.

Rabbi Gary Klein is spiritual leader of Temple Ahavat Shalom, Palm Harbor, Florida, a position he has held since July, 1987. Prior to assuming the pulpit of there, he served for nine years as spiritual leader of Temple Beth Israel, Altoona, Pennsylvania. Before moving to Altoona, Rabbi Klein served for three years as Assistant Rabbi and Director of Education and Youth Programming at Temple Anshe Sholom, Olympia Fields, Illinois.

Rabbi Dov Hillel Klein has served as Executive Director of the Tannenbaum Chabad House – Northwestern Jewish Center.

Rabbi Yaakov Klein is an author, musician, and lecturer devoted to sharing the inner light of Torah through his books, music and lectures. Over the last 10 years, R' Yaakov has shared his passion for the Chassidic wisdom and the inner light of Torah in a plethora of educational capacities including as teacher for the Illinois Center for Jewish Studies and Yeshivat Mevaseret Tzion, as the founding director of the Lost Princess Initiative (LPI), and as a freelance content creator and educator for many organizations including Chabad.org, the Breslov Research Center, Meaningful Minute, TYH Nation, and the Chizuk Mission. Along with his wife Shira and their two beautiful children, R' Yaakov has moved to the UK to join Jewish Futures as the founding director of Eilecha, a new organization focused on creating opportunities for spiritual growth and experiential education in the local community and beyond.

Miriam Klimova is student-rabbi of Shirat Ha-Yam congregation in Haifa. She grew up in Lviv, studied Judaism in Poland and moved to Israel in 2018. She is currently a rabbinic student at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem.

Rabbi Tracy Guren Klirs received her B.A. in Yiddish literature at the University of Chicago and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1977. She was ordained as a rabbi from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati in 1984. Her book, The Merit of Our Mothers: A Bilingual Anthology of Jewish Women’s Prayers, was published by HUC Press in 1992. She serves as the rabbi of Temple Kol Tikvah in Davidson, North Carolina.

The Knesset haRabanim b'Yisrael (Rabbinical Assembly in Israel) is the central body of Masorti-affiliated rabbis in the State of Israel. It is closely associated with the Masorti Movement for Conservative Judaism in Israel, and the international Rabbinical Assembly.

Sandra Kochmann is the first female rabbi to serve in Brazil, although she was born in Paraguay. She was ordained by the Conservative rabbinical school Seminario Rabinico Latinoamericano in 2000. In 2003 she began work as a rabbi in Brazil, specifically as an assistant rabbi at the largest synagogue in Rio de Janeiro, called Associação Religiosa Israelita. In 2004 she became the first female rabbi invited to the bimah at the Congregação Israelita Paulista, Brazil’s largest synagogue, when she attended the Conference of the Jewish Communities of the Americas in São Paulo, where she was the only woman among 25 rabbis. In 2005 she moved to Israel, where she became the coordinator of the Kehillah "Masortit Mishpachtit beBeit HaKerem" in Jerusalem. In 2008 she was appointed as Masorti Olami's coordinator for weddings and giyur.

Claudio Kogan is rabbi of Temple Emanuel, McAllen, Texas. Born in Argentina, he graduated from the medical school of the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina . He holds a Masters in Education from Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio and a Masters Degree in Bioethics from the University of Pennsylvania, Medical School, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Yedidah Koren is a fellow in the fourth cohort of Maskilot. She is a PhD student in Talmud at Tel Aviv University and is writing her dissertation on lineage and bastards in rabbinic literature. Yedidah holds a BA in Talmud and Classics from Hebrew University and an MA in Talmud from Tel Aviv University. She has also studied at Matan, Migdal Oz and Midreshet Lindenbaum, and at the advanced Beit Midrash at the Hartman Institute. In 2016-2017, Yedidah was a research fellow at Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. Yedidah has taught at Bar Ilan University, Yeshivat Hadar, and the Drisha Institute in New York and at the Paideia Institute in Stockholm. (via the Shalom Hartman Institute; photo credit: Yoray Liberman)

Rabbi Dr. Ari Korenblit is a licensed psychotherapist in private practice, a graphologist/handwriting expert and a Supreme Court-certified document examiner.

A musmaḥ of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS) of Yeshiva University, Kornblau served for a dozen years as a senior member of the rabbinic staff of the Rabbinical Council of America. He has been a member of the Rabbinic Advisory Board of Canfei Nesharim for more than a decade and has spoken and written on its behalf for years, mostly recently at a conference of scientists and religious leaders at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. He also serves as rabbi of Young Israel of Hollis Hills – Windsor Park in Queens, New York. A graduate of Yale, he was a fixed income computer programming analyst at Goldman, Sachs & Co. before entering the rabbinate. He also studied at Yeshivat Har Etzion in Alon Shvut, Israel.

Rabbi Raquel S. (Riqi) Kosovske is the rabbi of Beit Ahavah ~ The Reform Synagogue of Greater Northampton in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Roy D. Kotansky is a scholar and notable author of works in the Classics and in Biblical Studies. He was the recipient of the Noyes-Cutter Greek prize University of Chicago in 1980, and a fellow in Antiquities at the Jean Paul Getty Museum, 1983-1984.

Rabbi Laurence A. Kotok, DD, from West Orange, New Jersey, is a Reform movement rabbi in the United States. After graduating Rutgers University in 1967, he was ordained at Hebrew Union College (HUC) in 1972. He served as an assistant rabbi in Temple Sinai in Roslyn Heights, New York, before coming to the North Country Reform Temple (Ner Tamid of Glen Cove) in 1974. In 1996, he began serving Temple B'rith Kodesh in Rochester, New York. He was National Chair of the ARZA Rabbinic Cabinet and helped to found the Rochester Kollel.

Nir Krakauer is a civil engineering professor at City College of New York.

Dr. Dani Kranz studies Social Pedagogics and Social Policy at Bergische University Wuppertal (Germany) and is the director of Two Foxes Consulting. Kranz research areas covers ethnicity, migration, law, politics and state/stateliness as well as organisation anthropology in Germany and Israel/Palestine.

Rabbi Miles Krassen, PhD., is a teacher, author, scholar in the fields of comparative mysticism and the World’s Wisdom Traditions, and musician. He completed his doctorate in Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and received rabbinic ordination from the P’nai Or Fellowship. Currently located in Albuquerque, NM, he serves as Rabbi of Planetary Judaism, an organization for disseminating progressive mystical Jewish teachings based on the spiritual insights of early Hasidism and Kabbalah. He devotes himself to mystical studies and practice, and the teaching and training of teachers and practitioners of a new paradigm for inner development and self-transformation within the Jewish tradition. In addition to his academic career, Reb Miles has been teaching inner Judaism for many years to private students and at summer retreats including Elat Chayyim, the Aleph Kallah, and Ruach Haaretz. His classes and workshops are based on a deep love for traditional sources, familiarity with many non-Jewish wisdom traditions, and respect for the latest findings of contemporary scholarship and science.

Rabbi Harold J. Kravitz holds the Max Newman Family Chair in Rabbinics at the Adath Jeshurun Congregation, Minnetonka, Minnesota. He has served the congregation since 1987 when he was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary. He is Past Board Chair of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger and serves on the rabbinic advisory committee of the Masorti Foundation. He serves as an officer of the Rabbinical Assembly. He serves also on the RA's Va’ad Hakavod (Professional Ethics Committee), which he chaired for six years.

Rabbi Gabe Kretzmer Seed has served as a Jewish chaplain in the New York City Department of Correction since 2018 where he provides religious services, classes and spiritual support primarily for Jewish incarcerated individuals along with providing general spiritual care for the incarcerated and staff of all faiths and none. He was recently named one of the New York Jewish Week 36 Under 36, a list of individuals making a difference in the New York Jewish Community for his work in the jails during the pandemic. Gabe received semikhah from Yeshivat Chovevei Torah in 2017, and is a graduate of Columbia University where he majored in United States History. He also received BA and MA degrees from the Jewish Theological Seminary – JTS where he focused on Talmud and Midrash, and Jewish education. He is the co-founder of the Zemirot Database, an editable online database for zemirot, liturgy, and other Jewish songs. Gabe is an avid Baal tefillah and Baal qriyah, and leads davening regularly in both his home community of Riverdale, NY, and has served as the High Holiday Ḥazzan Sheni at Congregation Tiferet Israel in Austin, TX since 2014. He also loves studying Jewish liturgy, especially comparing siddurim of different nusḥaot and minhagim.

Rabbi Aaron Krupnick was born and raised in Philadelphia. He was ordained by the Conservative Movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary in 1988. Upon ordination, Rabbi Krupnick and his wife Helene moved to Montgomery, Alabama, where he served as spiritual leader of Agudath Israel Synagogue for six years. In 1994, Rabbi Krupnick became Associate Rabbi at Congregation Beth El and was named Senior Rabbi in 2000. He holds a Bachelors Degree from Columbia University in Comparative Religion, a Bachelors Degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary in Philosophies of Judaism, and a Bachelors Degree in Hebrew Literature from the University of Judaism in Los Angeles, California. Other degrees include a Masters in Counseling and Human Development, as well as a Masters in Rabbinics.

Rabbi Elliot Kukla (he/they) is a rabbi, chaplain, author, artist, and activist. Elliot has been tending to the spiritual needs of grief, dying, and becoming (more) ill or disabled since 2007 and he has been engaged in justice work since 1996. He is currently faculty at Svara: A traditionally radical yeshiva where he is also the founder and director of the Communal Loss and Adaptation Project (CLAP). He was a rabbi at the Bay Area Jewish Healing Center from 2008 to 2021 where he co-directed Kol Hanshama, the multiple award-winning volunteer spiritual care hospice program. Elliot’s essays on disability and spirituality have been featured numerous times in the New York Times, as well as many other anthologies and magazines. In 2006, he was the first openly transgender rabbi to be ordained by a mainstream denomination (the Reform seminary, Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles) and in 2007 he trained as a chaplain at UCSF medical center. He currently lives on Oholone Land (Oakland, California) with his partner, their kid, queer chosen family, two Boston Terriers, and a cat named Turkey.

Sveta Kundish was born in Ukraine in 1982 and began studying music at age seven. After settling in Israel with her family in 1995, she continued her music studies at the Tel Aviv Municipal Arts High School, focusing on voice and piano. Following her graduation, she studied voice with Ella Akritova, a prominent singer and former professor at the Kiev Conservatory and, in 2001, began attending the Yiddish music master class of Nechama Lifshitz. In 2003, she enrolled in the musicology program at Tel Aviv University, earning a B.A. in 2007; that same year, she was invited by Prof. Yuri Kokozey to study voice at the Prayner Konservatorium in Vienna. During her studies in Vienna, Sveta won first prize at the 2008 Golden Hanukkia international vocal competition in Berlin. Following her graduation in 2011, Sveta began a master studies program at the Cantorial Department of the Abraham Geiger Kolleg in Berlin, which she completed in 2018.

Chana Kupetz is the Children’s and Families Program Manager at Hadar. Prior to her work at Hadar, Chana taught Hebrew and Judaic Studies at Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School in Washington, DC and at Heilicher Jewish Day School in Minneapolis. Originally from Israel, Chana was a fellow in Hadar’s first full-year Beit Midrash where she met her wife. She received her undergraduate degree in Psychology from Northeastern University in Boston. Chana lives in Washington, DC with her wife Avi Strausberg and their two young children.

Ron Kuzar is Professor Emeritus at the Department of English, University of Haifa. His main interests are English and Hebrew syntax and language and ideology.

Cantor Hinda Labovitz is the cantor/educator of Ohr Kodesh Congregation in Chevy Chase, MD. She graduated with a masters degree in Judaic studies and cantorial ordination Hebrew College in Newton, MA in June of 2014. She has served as a part-time shlichat tsibbur at Congregation Kehillath Israel in Brookline, MA, the ritual director of Temple Emanu-El in Providence from 2009-2012, and and as the assistant to the conductor for the Zamir Chorale of Boston, with whom she was a proud alto from 2006-2014. Hinda maintains http://tekhines.wordpress.com/, where she publishes new and translated editions of tekhines texts.

Joy Ladin, Gottesman Chair in English at Yeshiva University, is the first openly transgender employee of an Orthodox Jewish institution. Her memoir, Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders, was a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award, and she was named to the 2012 Forward 50 list of influential or courageous American Jews. A work of creative non-fiction, The Soul of the Stranger, about reading the Torah from a transgender perspective, is due out in 2018 from Brandeis University Press. She is also the author of seven books of poetry, including two Lambda Literary Award finalists, Transmigration and Impersonation. Two new collections, Fireworks in the Graveyard (Headmistress Press) and The Future is Trying to Tell Us Something: New and Selected Poems (Sheep Meadow Press) are coming out in 2017. Her work has been recognized with a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Fulbright Scholarship, an American Council of Learned Societies Research Fellowship, and a Hadassah Brandeis Institute Research Fellowship, among other honors. A nationally recognized speaker on trans and Jewish identity, she was recently named to LGBTQ Nation's Top 50 Transgender Americans list. Links to her work can be found at joyladin.com.

Daniel Landau (he/they) is a student from Karmiel, Israel. Daniel is currently doing national service in Tel Aviv, and has volunteered at a school, a trans resource center, and a cat shelter throughout his time there so far. Daniel hopes to continue helping to translate liturgy in the future and is very grateful to all of the people who have helped them at the Open Siddur Project thus far.

Rabbi Gilah Langner serves as a rabbi, educator, and chaplain in Washington, DC. She is a co-editor of the literary journal for Jewish liturgy and poetry, Kerem. She teaches at The George Washington University and is a coordinator of the Washington Jewish Healing Network.

Mona Lantz Levi, formerly of Bucharest, Romania, lives in Rishon LeZion, Israel.

Sara Lapidot is a Jerusalem based paralegal.

Yeva Lapsker is a translator and dancer.

Yahnatan Lasko is a software developer and engineer with a masters degree in computer science from Johns Hopkins University. Jewish, he is also a second-generation adherent of Messianic Judaism, a movement of Judaizing Christians and Jesus-believing Jews originating out of the Hebrew Christian Movement and the Jesus Movement. Yahnatan identifies as a Messianic Jew and the stream of Messianic Judaism to which he belongs is non-missionary (does not engage in missionary activities), rejects Christian supercessionist beliefs, and looks toward the halakhah of rabbinic Judaism for guidance in ritual and daily living. He is an alumn of Ets Chaiyim day school (Gaithersburg, Maryland) and completed his ordination in Messianic rabbinic and pastoral leadership at the Messianic Jewish Theological Institute. His interests include Jewish/Christian relations, interpreting the New Testament as Jewish texts, disability in halakhah, and theory and practice of Ashkenazi musical nusaḥ.

Rabbi Nathalie Lastreger, ordained at the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary, serves as the spiritual leader of the Masorti Family Minyan in the northern Israeli community of Kfar Vradim.

David Baruch Lau (Hebrew: דוד לאו; born 13 January 1966) is the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel. He was appointed after achieving a majority of the vote on 24 July 2013. He previously served as the Chief Rabbi of Modi'in-Maccabim-Re'ut, Israel, and as the Chief Rabbi of Shoham. Lau is the son of former Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel Yisrael Meir Lau.

Yisrael Meir Lau (ישראל מאיר לאו‎; born 1 June 1937) served as the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, Israel, and Chairman of Yad Vashem. He previously served as the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1993 to 2003.

Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie is the founding director of Storahtelling, Inc. and the spiritual leader of Lab/Shul. An Israeli-born Jewish educator, writer, and performer, he was hailed by Time Out New York as “Super Star of David,” an “iconoclastic mystic,” and as “one of the most interesting thinkers in the Jewish world” by the New York Jewish Week. He is currently a rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Amichai was a Jerusalem Fellow at the Mandel Leadership Institute in Israel (2008-2009) and is a consultant to the Reboot Network, a member of the URJ Faculty Team, and a fellow of the new Clergy Leadership Institute. He is the proud Abba of Alice, Ezra, and Charlotte-Hallel.

Hillel Lavery-Yisraëli is the rabbi of Israel Center of Conservative Judaism in Queens, New York. Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, he did most of his rabbinical training in Jerusalem. He lived in Israel for 16 years, during which time he taught at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem and served as the rabbi of Conservative Congregation Beit Israel in Netanya. From 2012-2015 he served as chief rabbi of Gothenburg, Sweden. Until August 2022, he served as the rabbi of Beth Jacob Synagogue in Hamilton, Canada. In keeping with his position as rabbi, he is an activist for human rights, women’s rights, anti-racism, 2S LGBTQIA+ rights and basic income. He has authored numerous articles, some of which can be seen here and here. Click here to watch his lecture, "Gender, Sexuality and Identity in the Jewish Tradition". More of his instructional videos can be found on youtube here and here. Rabbi Hillel is married to Yonah who is also a rabbi, a soferet and an artist. He is the proud father of four children.

Avraham Leader is an internationally acclaimed teacher of various schools of Kabbalah and a founder of Matzref – The School for the Study of the Prophetic Consciousness Teachings of Rabbi Avraham Abulafia. Avraham has published new editions and translations of primary Kabbalistic texts. His students over the past thirty-five years include teachers, researchers, rabbis and beginners.

Rabbi Cantor Meyer Heschl Leifer (1932-), born in the Lower East Side, served as rabbi of Congregation Emunath Israel (the Chelsea Shul) for over four decades (1958-2000). His album, Songs of Our People was released in 1970. His oral history was recorded by the Yiddish Book Center in 2019.

Rabbi Stephen A. Leon is rabbi emeritus of Congregation B'nai Zion of El Paso, Texas, having served from 1986 to the present. He was born in Brooklyn, New York abd graduated from Colombia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, receiving his ordination from the Academy for Jewish Religion. Rabbi Leon was the dean of the Academy for Jewish Religion from 1974 through 1986. He also was an instructor in Homiletics, Practical Rabbinics, and Cantillations. At the same time, Rabbi Leon served as the rabbi of Elmwood Park Jewish Center in New Jersey from 1971 through 1986. He served on the boards of the bioethics committee of Providence Hospital, El Paso Hospice, the Jewish Federation, and the Holocaust Museum. Rabbi Leon wrote numerous articles published in the Paterson News, El Paso Times, and The Jewish Voice of El Paso. He taught in the Religious Studies department of the University of Texas at El Paso. He has appeared on National Public Radio and has made numerous appearances on local television programs. Rabbi Leon has received awards from Israel Bonds, the Israel government Tourist Office, Hadassah, the Bergen County Board of Rabbis, United Synagogue Youth, and others. In 1999, Rabbi Leon received a grant from the El Paso Community Foundation and visited many places in Europe where Crypto-Jews have lived, including Belmont, Portugal where 300 Crypto-Jews formally returned to Judaism. Rabbi Leon is a trusted friend and teacher for the Anusim and has helped many individuals and families make their return to Judaism.

Noam Lerman is a rabbinical student at Hebrew College.

Dr. Eve Levavi Feinstein holds a PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University. She is the author of Sexual Pollution in the Hebrew Bible (Oxford University Press, 2014) as well as a variety of academic and popular articles. Dr. Feinstein serves as editorial consultant for TheTorah.com, a program devoted to integrating academic biblical scholarship and Jewish learning, and technical writer for the Open Siddur Project, an open source project developing a digital archive of Jewish liturgical texts. Dr. Feinstein is also the founder of Nisaba Editing where she edits a variety of works for individuals and publishers.

Dan Levene is a lecturer of Jewish history and culture in the Department of History at Southampton University

Dr. Yael Levine (Heb: יעל לוין) holds a Ph.D. from the Talmud department of Bar-Ilan University. She has published numerous studies focusing on issues related to women and Judaism. She has also composed many prayers and midrashim.

Born in Jerusalem, Shira Levine and her family are now part of the pluralistic community living at Kibbutz Hanaton. Shira grew up in a Conservative congregation in Jerusalem and was active in the Noam youth movement and Ramah summer camps. After her army service she went on Shlichut to the Jewish community in Melbourne, Australia. She is an attorney, a graduate of the Law Faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and holds a graduate degree in Talmud and Gender Studies from the Solomon Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies. She has combined her legal work with widespread communal activity at the Tel Aviv Beit Tefilah Israeli, as well as for the Hanaton community. She leads lifecycle events and teaches and facilitates informal Jewish education programs at the Hanaton Educational Center, as well as at summer camps.

Karen Levine is a member of the clergy team of the Woodstock Jewish Congregation in Woodstock, New York. She is a skilled and creative ritual leader as well as a multi-instrumental musician and visual artist.

Rabbi Dr. Joel Levenson serves at the Midway Jewish Center in Syosset, NY. He earned a doctorate in Pastoral Care & Counseling from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he also received a Masters Degree in Jewish Education. He earned a B.A. from Miami University in Oxford, OH with degrees in Psychology and Political science, with studies abroad at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Originally from Akron, OH, in 1991 he served as International President of United Synagogue (USY). He is an alumnus of the Jewish Leaders Program, an initiative of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He serves on the Board of the Long Island Board of Rabbis. In addition, he enjoys time each summer at Camp Ramah in the Berkshires, a sleepover camp, serving in many capacities that reflect his love of fun-based education and inspiration.

JewishBoston.com is a website for Jews in Boston where you can find an immediate connection to all the amazing Jewish things that are happening in Boston right now. Discover links to cultural events (music, dance, film, lectures, cooking classes), Jewish education (courses, lectures, trips), organizations (synagogues, community centers, professional networking) and lots more.Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP) created the world of JewishBoston.com so that, finally, there is an easy-to-find, vibrant online place to connect Jews, especially young Jews, with one another and the community at large. No more endless searching for ways to experience Jewish life. JewishBoston.com is a natural extension of CJP and was born out of the realization that a new way of thinking was needed to bring the community together.

Rabbi Eugene Levy, born in El Paso, is a Reform movement rabbi in the United States. Raised in San Antonio, Texas, he attended the University of Texas and was ordained in 1972 at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, Ohio. Rabbi Levy served for three years as the director of the Hillel at the University of Oklahoma before coming to Congregation Beth El (Tyler, Texas) in 1975. In 1987, he came to Congregation B’nai Israel in Little Rock, Arkansas. He is the author of A Privileged Encounter: My Unique Experience with President Bill Clinton, 1987-2000 (2015).

Rachie Lewis is the Senior Writer at Keshet: For LGBTQ equality in Jewish life.

Rabbi Annie Lewis is currently the Director of Rabbinic Formation at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, where she oversees field education for students. Rabbi Lewis was ordained from The Jewish Theological Seminary in 2012, received a master’s degree in Jewish women’s and gender studies and was awarded a Wexner Graduate Fellowship. She served as Assistant Rabbi of Germantown Jewish Centre from 2012-2016. Rabbi Lewis has served as a visiting rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel in Gulfport, Mississippi and has led community organizing trainings with JOIN for Justice. Annie studied linguistic anthropology at Brown University and at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. She fell in love with Judaism at Camp Ramah in the Poconos, delved into Torah at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem and spent a year as a madricha (counselor) for the Conservative Movement's Nativ College Leadership program in Israel. Rabbi Lewis has been in training as a couples and family therapist and brings this relationship toolkit to supporting people through life transitions and to officiating at life cycle events. She is a singer, poet and performance artist with roots in the Storahtelling ritual theater company.

The Liberal Jewish Synagogue, or LJS (קהל קדוש לב חדש, Qahal Qadosh Lev Ḥadash), is a house of prayer in St John's Wood, London, founded in 1911. It is the oldest and largest member of Britain's Liberal Judaism, a constituent member of the World Union for Progressive Judaism.

 

John Linder is rabbi of Temple Solel in Paradise Valley, Arizona. Before coming to Temple Solel, Rabbi Linder served as a rabbi at Congregation B’nai Jehoshua Beth Elohim in Glenview, Illinois. Rabbi Linder received a Masters in Hebrew Letters and was ordained at the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati in 2003. A 1980 Cum Laude graduate of Amherst College, Rabbi Linder became a rabbi at age 46 after earlier careers as a community and labor organizer and as an executive in his family’s scrap-metal recycling business in Buffalo.

Rabbi Alona Lisitsa, originally from Kiev, Ukraine, is a Reform rabbi at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem. She is the first female rabbi in Israel to join a religious council (Mevasseret Tsiyon in 2012).

Tamari Lomtadze is a professor in the Department of Georgian Philology at Akaki Tsereteli State University (ATSU, Kutaisi, Georgia) and a senior researcher at Arnold Chikobava Institute of Linguistics at Iv. Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (Tbilisi, Georgia).

Rabbi Dr. Nathan Lopes Cardozo is the founder and Dean of the David Cardozo Academy, Machon Aron and Betsy Spijer, in Jerusalem. He is the author of many books on Jewish Law and Philosophy and lectures in more than fifty Institutions of Jewish and secular learning around the world. He pens a weekly “Thoughts to Ponder” which is sent electronically. To receive: please sign up at cardozoacademy.org.

Rabbi Michael Lotker is Rabbi Emeritus at Temple Ner Ami in Camarillo, California, Rabbi of the Jewish Community of Ojai, and the Community Rabbi for the Jewish Federation of Ventura County. He is a second career rabbi having been ordained at age 55 from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in 2003. Rabbi Lotker is also a physicist who spent his first career in alternative energy focusing on wind, solar and geothermal energy. An entrepreneur, he started a number of alternative energy firms including a wind power development company that installed and operated wind farms in Hawaii and California. Rabbi Lotker holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in Physics from Queens College in New York City and from the University of Illinois and is widely published in the alternative energy field. Prior to his ordination from HUC-JIR (the Reform movement's rabbinic seminary) in 2003, he received his Master of Hebrew Letters degree from this same institution. Rabbi Lotker is a member of the Central Conference of America Rabbis and the Board of Rabbis of Southern California.

Rabbi Thomas A. Louchheim, MAHL, L.D.Div. is the rabbi of Congregation Or Chadash since its beginning in 1995. He was ordained in 1987 and went on to serve as an assistant Rabbi for two years in Kansas City. He moved to Tucson with his wife, Marcia, in 1989, where he was rabbi at Temple Emanu-El for five years. He then served for two years as an executive at Handmaker Hospice. Since becoming the spiritual leader of Congregation Or Chadash, he has served as the Co-Chair of the annual Yom HaShoah service, has been president of the Tucson Board of Rabbis, and a board member for Habitat for Humanity, Tucson Jewish Family and Children's Services, and Handmaker. If you look up to the heavens, you might see the only space object named after a rabbi: asteroid 9584 Louchheim. Rabbi and Marcia Louchheim have been married for over 25 years and are the proud parents to Katie, Jacob, Daniel, and Benjamin.

Yaakov (James) A. Love (Hebrew: יַעֲקוֹב שָׁלוֹמִי לוּב ) is a Scrum Master in Austin, Texas. He graduated from Texas State University with a double BA in Computer Science and Philosophy. He also completed some graduate work in Jewish Studies from the Laura and Alvin Siegal College of Judaic Studies. Love currently serves as president of Congregation Shalom Rav (Austin's Reconstructionist and Renewal congregation).

Rabbi Jacob Luski is rabbi emeritus of Congregation B’nai Israel (CBI) of St. Petersburg, Florida. He was born in Havana, Cuba and immigrated with his family to the United States when he was 11. Rabbi Jacob Luski graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1971 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Management. From there, he enrolled in the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, New York, where he received his Master of Arts in 1974, and then continued at JTS to graduate from Rabbinical School, At CBI, he established meaningful educational experiences and activities such as the JTS Tampa Bay Outreach Lecture Series, the first Mitzvah Day in Pinellas County, and Congregational trips to Israel. He also established the Hevra Kadisha Burial Society to ensure respectful and spiritual care for Jewish people after death. For 26 years, he has been the Jewish Chaplain at the VA Medical Center, Bay Pines, Florida. Both he and his wife Joanne, were instrumental in founding the Pinellas County Jewish Day School, welcoming the school on the CBI campus as it grew over it’s first 11 years. Rabbi Luski founded the Vaad Kashrut of Pinellas County, to ensure Kosher supervision for local hotels, restaurants, and caterers. After retiring from Congregation B’nai Israel in June of 2018 and earning the title of Rabbi Emeritus, he continues his support of Israel as the 17th Chairperson of the International Rabbinic Advisory Council of the State of Israel Bonds.

Rabbi M. Bruce Lustig is Senior Rabbi at Washington Hebrew Congregation, where he has served for more than 25 years. Along with the daily responsibilities of leading a more than 2,800 family congregation, Rabbi Lustig has long held leadership roles in the local and national Jewish communities. He has served on the Washington, D.C. Mayor's Faith Advisory Board and as the National Liaison for National Day of Prayer. A committed social activist, Rabbi Lustig initiated Mitzvah Day at Washington Hebrew Congregation, which has become an international model for social justice programming. Rabbi Lustig is a proactive leader of Washington, D.C.'s interfaith community and organized the nation's first Abrahamic Summit, bringing together Christians, Jews, and Muslims for dialogue. Newsweek recognized him as one of "America's most influential rabbis." Ordained at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Rabbi Lustig also holds a doctorate of divinity and a master's degree in Hebrew letters. He earned a bachelor's degree with honors from the University of Tennessee.

Rabbi Hershel Lutch is an advocate for the American Jewish community and has served in leadership roles within several prominent Jewish organizations, including Aish HaTorah.

Akiva Males is rabbi of Young Israel of Memphis, Tennessee. He grew up in Cleveland, OH, and received his Jewish education at the Hebrew Academy of Cleveland, the Wisconsin Institute for Torah Study (W.I.T.S.), and Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim (Rabbinical Seminary of America) based in Queens, NY -- where he received his semikha. From 2007-2016, Rabbi Males served as rabbi of Kesher Israel Congregation in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Rabbi Herbert Mandl, born in Baltimore, Maryland, is an Conservative movement rabbi in the United States. He graduated cum laude from Johns Hopkins University in 1965 with an A.B. in German and Semitics. In 1969, he was given semikhah by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. (He also received semikhah from Rabbi Aryeh Leib Spitz.) He has served as rabbi of congregations and served in academic positions in Edmonton and Montreal, Canada. He served as Senior Rabbi of Kehilath Israel since 1977. In 1981, Rabbi Mandl received a Ph.D. magna cum laude in Medieval Philosophy and Law from the University of Montreal where his dissertation was on the Jewish Matrimonial Law in comparison to the Christian laws of the time. He received his Doctor of Divinity degree in 1994 from JTS. He was honored by the Vatican by allowing him to do research in the Vatican Library in 2013.

Rabbi Toby H. Manewith is an Educational Consultant specializing in Jewish Curriculum Development.

Dr. Yaacov Maoz, the son of Iraqi-Jewish immigrants to Israel, works at the Israel Association of Community Centers, where he is Director for Content Development and has published Festivals in the Community, a series of widely distributed booklets, the foremost of which is the Haggadah of Identities, a Passover Haggadah with an Israeli commentary. He is involved in strengthening Jewish pluralism, in promoting dialogue between different sectors in Judaism, in the connection between Israel and the Diaspora, and in developing understanding between Jews and Arabs in Israel. Dr. Maoz has led several conferences with his associates in the Tikun Movement, the most outstanding of which was the Matrouz International Conference, in which Arab colleagues from Morocco and France participated. He has established a public council of intellectuals and a committee of social activists for the revival of the Aramit (ארמית) language. He has opened study groups and created a Facebook group, held a preliminary conference on solidarity with the Assyrian nation, published journalistic articles, spoken on radio broadcasts, and appeared on television. He maintains contact with the Assyrian diaspora leadership the world over on a daily basis and seeks to increase awareness throughout the Israeli public of the Assyrian nation’s suffering, its cultural richness, and the wonderful opportunity strategic cooperation with the Assyrian nation offers.

Richard Marcovitz is the former rabbi of Congregation B'nai Israel, Pittsburg, PA (1976-1996) and of Emanuel Synagogue, Oklahoma City, OK (1996-2002). In 2002, he plead guilty to inappropriately touching two students, a teacher and an after-care worker at an Oklahoma City Jewish school after a judge ruled evidence about the same kind of behavior over the last 40 years could be heard at his jury trial.

Dr. Ivan G. Marcus is the Frederick P. Rose Professor of Jewish History at Yale University.

Rabbi Jay Marcus served as the Rabbi of the Young Israel of Staten Island for more than thirty years. He is the founding Dean of Yeshivat Reishit in Beit Shemesh, Israel.

Rabbi Marc Margolius is Senior Core Faculty member at the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, a center for training rabbis, cantors, educators and lay leaders in Jewish mindfulness practice and transforming Jewish life. He hosts IJS’s daily online Jewish meditation, directs programming for alumni of its clergy training program, and teaches online programs integrating mindfulness with middot practice. He has authored two years of mindfulness and middot-based study and practice teaching on the weekly Torah portion. Previously, he served as rabbi at West End Synagogue in NYC and at Beth Am Israel in Penn Valley PA (1989-2002), where he helped develop a model of the synagogue as a Shabbat-centered community constructed around intergenerational learning. Rabbi Margolius was ordained at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (1989), and is a graduate of Yale Law School.

David Evan Markus (born 1973) is an American attorney, public officer, rabbi and spiritual director. He currently serves as Deputy Chief Counsel in the New York State Judiciary, Judicial Referee in New York Supreme Court, senior builder with Bayit: Your Jewish Home, and co-rabbi of Temple Beth-El of City Island (New York City, New York). Markus formerly served as Special Counsel to the New York State Senate Majority and co-chair of ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal. A leader of Jewish Renewal, Markus resides in Westchester County, New York.

Rabbi Dalia Marx (PhD) is the Aaron Pankin professor of liturgy and Midrash at the Jerusalem campus of Hebrew Union College-JIR, and teaches in various academic institutions in Israel and Europe. Marx, tenth generation in Jerusalem, earned her doctorate at the Hebrew University and her rabbinic ordination at HUC-JIR in Jerusalem and Cincinnati. She is involved in various research projects and is active in promoting liberal Judaism in Israel. Marx writes for academic and popular journals and publications. She is the author of בזמן: מסעות בלוח השנה היהודי ישראלי (Bazman 2018), When I Sleep and when I Wake: On Prayers between Dusk and Dawn (Yediot Sfarim 2010, in Hebrew), A Feminist Commentary of the Babylonian Talmud (Mohr Siebeck, 2013, in English) and the co-editor of a few books. She was the chief editor of T'fillat HaAdam: Israeli Reform Siddur (2020). Marx lives in Jerusalem with her husband Rabbi Roly Zylbersztein (PhD) and their three children.

HaTenu'ah haMasortit (התנועה המסורתית, the Masorti Movement in Israel) creates opportunities for all Jews to live Jewish lives in Israel unhindered, and on their own terms. It is a religious movement based on values of inclusion combined with traditional practice and Halakha (Jewish Law). Masorti represents a “third” way. Not secular Judaism. Not ultra-Orthodoxy. But a Jewish life that integrates secular beliefs. Halakhah with inclusion and egalitarianism. Tradition that recognizes the realities of today’s world. The Masorti Movement is committed to a pluralistic, egalitarian, and democratic vision of Zionism. Masorti engages tens of thousands of Israelis each year, young and old, native born as well as olim from around the globe.

From a family of musicians, Isaac Gantwerk Mayer believes that creative art is one of the most powerful ways to get in touch with the divine. He composes music and poetry in Hebrew and English. (He also translates and transcribes Hebrew and Aramaic texts, adding niqqud and t'amim as needed.) Isaac runs a Jewish music transcription service, which will transcribe and set any Jewish music in any language, recorded or written. Contact his service on Facebook or via his music blog.

Rabbi Oded Mazor, born and raised in Israel, received his Bachelors and Masters degrees in Jewish Philosophy in the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and rabbinic ordination from the Israeli program of HUC-JIR. Oded co-edited the Israeli Reform Three Regalim (Pilgrim Holy Days) prayer book, HaSimcha Sh'Balev, and is part of the editorial committee of Tfilat HaAdam. After nearly a decade as rabbi and educator in the Leo Baeck Education Center, Haifa, and living in the renewed Kibbutz Ḥannaton, Oded and the family are back in Jerusalem, where he serves as the rabbi of Ḳehilat Ḳol HaNeshama.

Rabbi Noa Mazor (HUC Jer '16) Educator, inter-religious and peace activist.

My name is Ibtisam. I am Palestinian, living in northern Israel. My primary focus is on improving relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel, and I also work to improve the status of women in both Arab and Jewish society. Even though Arabs and Israelis live very close to one another, most have no social connection whatsoever. Most of my work is in the Palestinian community in Israel, especially amongst women whose position in Arab society is still repressed. I try to help them build up their confidence, and then I introduce them to groups of people of the three major faiths - Islam, Christianity and Judaism. For many years I have been counseling Arab and Jewish women regarding the status of women in society. As a religious Muslim woman, I work with religious Jewish, Druze, and Christian women on promoting peace by learning about each other's religions and cultures. I am on the board of Middleway, an NGO for the promotion of compassion and non-violence, and I helped found the Women's Interfaith Encounter, a program of the Interfaith Encounter Association.

Orna Meir-Stacey lives in Cambridge, England.

Rabbi Lev Meirowitz Nelson is the Director of Rabbinic Training for T’ruah: the Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. Lev was ordained in 2013 from Hebrew College, where he was a Wexner Graduate Fellow. In 2017, Lev was honored by the Covenant Foundation with a Pomegranate Prize, which recognizes early-career Jewish educators. Before attending rabbinical school, Lev taught fifth grade at the Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan for three years and worked for many summers at URJ Eisner Camp. He holds an AB in Geology from Brown University and spent a post-baccalaureate semester at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, where conservation and sustainable development are approached in the context of Arab-Israeli peace efforts.

Andrew Meit has studied and researched in various areas: the imagination, Martin Buber, Judaism, prophets and prophecy, and Ephraim Moses Lilien. In 1984, Meit earned a Bachelor of Arts in Religious Studies with minors in Mathematics and Philosophy from Stetson University. As a lifelong creative, he is a type and graphics designer focusing on Jewish art and digitally repairing damaged art.Meit is legally deaf-blind, and has several learning problems stemming from contracting congenital Rubella. He is active in the Independent Living Movement; been on several CIL boards. Throughout his life Meit has striven to turn his disabilities into well-made art that inspires and celebrates beauty and truth.Off and on for 40 years, Meit has been involved in interfaith services and study groups. He has informally lectured on Buber. He enjoys writing prayers and creating worship presentations.Although mainly self-taught in calligraphy, drawing and design, Meit formally studied at the Cleveland Art Institute. With the font editor Fontographer, he recreated the well known font GoodCity Modern (a faithful recreation of the Gutenberg’s bible typeface). Over the decades, he produced a digital recreation of the first page of Genesis from the Gutenberg Bible. He artistically colored many of E.M. Lilien’s line art illustrations, created a font based on Buber's handwriting, and recently, he created a new logo for the Florida Orange City Unitarian Universalist Congregation and improved a logo for Applied Jewish Spirituality group.Meit likes to help repair the world through his art; enjoys deep thoughts, playing with puzzles, and learning about Religion. He currently lives in Plantation, Florida.

Aaron Melman is head rabbi at Congregation Beth Shalom in Northbrook, IL. Originally from Toronto, he graduated York University with BA in Judaic Studies. He attended the Jewish Theological Seminary where he received his ordination in May 2002.While at JTS, Rabbi Melman taught Hebrew School at Or Zarua, a Conservative synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and served as a student chaplain with the New York City Fire Department (FDNY). Rabbi Melman is involved in the community through the Northbrook Clergy Association, serves on the Board of Directors of The Norton and Elaine Sarnoff for Jewish Genetics, and is the immediate Past-President of the Chicago Region of Rabbinical Assembly. Rabbi Melman also serves as the only Chaplain to the Northbrook Fire Department.

Shimon Menachem, a/k/a "Shimonides" is a writer and educator living in St. Louis, Missouri.

Dr. Aurora Mendelsohn is a biostatistician who lives in Toronto. Her work can be read in the Forward and at her blog, "Rainbow Tallit Baby".

Dr. Dan Mendelsohn Aviv has been engaged in Jewish learning as an educator, lecturer, professor, published scholar and author for almost twenty years. His book End of the Jews: Radical Breaks, Remakes and What Comes Next came out in 2012. Having spent three years creating an alternative model for informal education, he recently returned to his greatest passion-classroom instruction at Bialik Hebrew Day School in Toronto, Canada. He is also an itinerant blogger (at The Next Jew), inchoate podcaster and MacBook zealot. Most of all, he is proud of his darling Noa and three children.

Rabbi Joseph B. Meszler is the spiritual leader of Temple Sinai of Sharon, Massachusetts. He also has a regular blog on the Huffington Post and is the author of several books and articles. Rabbi Meszler has lectured widely and been heard in many venues, including Canadian Broadcasting Corporation radio. He has also been an instructor at the Kehillah Schechter Academy and previously served at Washington Hebrew Congregation in Washington, DC. He was ordained at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati in 1999.

Sarah M. is a third year medical student in Israel studying how to be a doctor, a friend, and an engaged citizen.

Ron Lee Meyers is an attorney in New York. His submissions to Open Siddur have been developed within the creative community of Minyan Maat, where he is a frequent darshan and shofar blower.

Rabbi Rachel Mikva is the Rabbi Herman E. Schaalman Chair & Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, and Senior Faculty Fellow of the InterReligious Institute at Chicago Theological Seminary, Illinois, United States.

Netanel Miles-Yépez is an artist, religion scholar, and spiritual teacher.Born into a Mexican-American family, in his late teens, Miles-Yépez discovered his family's hidden Jewish roots and began to explore Judaism and other religions seriously. After studying history of religions and comparative religion at Michigan State University, he moved to Boulder, Colorado to study with the innovative Hasidic master and leader in ecumenical dialogue, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, founder of the Jewish Renewal movement. In addition to Schachter-Shalomi, he also studied with various Sufi masters and teachers of Buddhism, and counts Father Thomas Keating, Trappist monk and founder of the Centering Prayer movement, as an important influence. In 2004, he and Schachter-Shalomi co-founded the Sufi-Hasidic, Inayati-Maimuni Order, fusing the Sufi and Hasidic principles of spirituality and practice espoused by Rabbi Avraham Maimuni in 13th-century Egypt with the teachings of the Ba’al Shem Tov and Hazrat Inayat Khan. Currently, he teaches in the Department of Religious Studies at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.As a writer on religious subjects, he is known for his critically acclaimed commentaries on Hasidic spirituality (written with Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi), A Heart Afire: Stories and Teachings of the Early Hasidic Masters (2009) and A Hidden Light: Stories and Teachings of Early HaBaD and Bratzlav Hasidism (2011). He is also the editor several ecumenical works, including The Common Heart: An Experience of Interreligious Dialogue (2006) and Meditations for InterSpiritual Practice (2011).As an artist, Miles-Yépez is mostly known for his vibrant paintings, influenced by traditional religious imagery and his Mexican-American heritage. His work in general represents a lifelong fascination with religious iconography, myth and symbol, image and archetype, cultural impressions and his own ancestry. Most of his work is concerned with the acculturation and use of traditional symbols and iconic forms in a new multi-cultural paradigm.

Rabbi Jessica Minnen is the founding director of Seven Wells and the assistant director of the Jewish Journey Project. She is an alumna of Washington University in St. Louis, the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, Paideia: The European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden, Baltimore Hebrew University, and the Jewish Theological Seminary. Jessica sits on the Board of Directors of the American Jewish Society for Service and is a visiting rabbi at Beth El in Bethesda, Maryland.

Dr. Yehudah Mirsky is a professor of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University and a faculty member of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies. He teaches courses on Zionism and Israel, Jewish intellectual and religious history, and human rights. He received a BA at Yeshiva College, JD at Yale and PhD (Religion) at Harvard, and rabbinic ordination in Jerusalem. He worked in Washington as a Senate aide to Bob Kerrey and Al Gore, at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and as special advisor in the US State Department's human rights bureau during the Clinton Administration. He was formerly on the faculty of Yeshvat Chovevei Torah and after the September 11 attacks he was a chaplain for the Red Cross. From 2002-2012 he lived in Jerusalem and was a fellow at several think tanks and and was one of the founders of Ha-Tenuah Ha-Yerushamit, a pluralistic, grass-roots community organizing network.

Ephraim Mirvis (born 1956) is an Orthodox rabbi who serves as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. Traditionally the post has entailed that he also serves as the head of all British Jews as the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth. He served as the Chief Rabbi of Ireland between 1985 and 1992. (via his Wikipedia article)

Mishkan Shalom, founded in 1988, is a Reconstructionist synagogue located in the Roxborough-Manayunk neighborhood of Philadelphia, dedicated to repair of the world through prayer, study and acts of caring.

A Mitzvah to Eat is an international, pluralistic group of educators and clergy who feel passionately about the Jewish principle of piḳoaḥ nefesh (saving a life). The organization supports those who need to connect to fast days, mitzvot, or holidays differently to protect their health and save their lives. They empower individuals and communities with learning, prayers, and rituals to bring holiness to acts of piḳoaḥ nefesh.

Rabbi Nina Mizrahi is the director of the Pritzker Center for Jewish Education of the JCC of Chicago. Raised as a free-range child, Rabbi Nina Mizrahi’s deep spiritual center is rooted in the woods of upstate New York. After studying Biology and Environmental Chemistry in college, she worked in a research lab. Later ordained at HUC-JIR, her approach to Jewish life draws from all expressions of Judaism and is influenced by science, nature and neo-chasidism. Rabbi Nina honors all learning styles and inspires learners to think in new ways. Identified as a community rabbi, she seeks to bring together believer, atheist and agnostic, humanist, deist and seeker, to discover a shared tradition of ethical and spiritual values.

Simon Montagu is a translator and software engineer. He worked as an internationalization (i18n) engineer involved for the Mozilla project beginning in 1999, originally through IBM in Israel, later on the staff of Netscape Communications Corporation from 2001-2003, after that as an independent contributor, and from 2006-2015 as a contractor for the Mozilla Corporation.

Michael A. Morgan was the translator of an English edition of Sefer ha-Razim based on the work of Mordecai Margoliot. If you have any more information about this scholar, please contact us.

Dr. Christopher S. Morrisset is the Sessional Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Trinity Western University.

Lada Moskalets is a historian, graduate student at Jagiellonian University (Kraków, Poland), and coordinator of the “Jewish Studies” program at Ukrainian Catholic University (Lviv, Ukraine). Her academic interests include the social history of Eastern European Jewry, and Yiddish.

Dr. Mossbridge is a mystic and scientist studying human consciousness and time. You can learn more about her work at The Institute for Love and Time (TILT).

Rabbi Linda Motzkin is the founder of the Community Torah Project, a long-term endeavor providing learning opportunities for all ages in scribal arts and hands-on participation in the making of a Torah scroll. She has led programs and workshops throughout the United States and abroad and is available for educational programs in a variety of formats and settings. She has served as co-rabbi of Temple Sinai of Saratoga Springs, New York since her rabbinic ordination in 1986.

Ben Murane works for the New Israel Fund, the leading organization promoting social justice and equality for all Israelis. Ben’s focus has been developing emerging Jewish communities around Israel, prayer, and social justice. Previously, he worked for New Voices, Hazon, and Breaking the Silence. He has held local and national lay leadership positions for J Street, Kol Zimrah, and the National Havurah Committee. He is also a co-publisher of Jewschool.com.

Rabbi Shimshon Nadel serves as Rabbi of Kehilat Zichron Yosef, Rosh Kollel of the Sinai Kollel and Hovevei Zion’s Kollel Boker, in Jerusalem. He lectures at the OU Center. His articles on Jewish Law & History have appeared in Tehumin, Hakirah, The Journal of Halacha & Contemporary Society, Segula, Kol ha-Torah, Kolmus, Makor Rishon, the Jerusalem Post, and the Jewish Press. He is also the author of “Medina & Halacha – Exploring the Jewish State through the lens of Jewish Law,” a popular weekly column looking at contemporary issues in Israel. On Israeli radio, he is a regular guest on Kol Yisrael and KAN. Before moving to Israel in 2009, Rabbi Nadel served as a rabbi in Nebraska and Connecticut. He studied at Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary under his rebbe and mentor, HaRav Moshe Dovid Tendler.

Rabbi Mara Nathan of Temple Beth–El, San Antonio, Texas, is the first woman to serve as senior rabbi of a major congregation in the State of Texas (having served since July 2014). Rabbi Nathan was ordained by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York in 2000. She was a recipient of the Steinhardt Fellowship; a scholarship awarded to rabbinical students to further informal education with teens and college age students, and received academic awards for Hebrew, History and Talmudic studies. She received a Bachelor’s of Arts Degree in history as well as certificates in Jewish studies and women's studies from Northwestern University in 1993. As a high school student, she studied flute at the Juilliard Conservatory Pre-college Program. Her extensive musical training and experience enables her to incorporate her voice, flute and guitar into her service leading and other programs. Prior to Temple Beth-El, Rabbi Nathan served as the Associate Rabbi and Director of Congregational Learning at Larchmont Temple in Larchmont, NY, where she worked in various capacities from 1994-2014. During her almost twenty years of service at Larchmont Temple, she played an instrumental role in all aspects of congregational life including spiritual worship, ritual, and lifelong learning. Rabbi Nathan has served on the board of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and is a member of the Women’s Rabbinic Network. She is also a past president of the Westchester Board of Rabbis. Rabbi Nathan has served on the faculty of URJ’s Greene Family Camp in Bruceville, Texas and Eisner Camp in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

Founded in 1893, the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) is a grassroots organization of volunteers and advocates who turn progressive ideals into action. Inspired by Jewish values, NCJW strives for social justice by improving the quality of life for women, children, and families and by safeguarding individual rights and freedoms.

Rabbi Dr. Gil Nativ is the Rabbi of Kehilat Hakerem - the Masorti Community in Karmiel Rabbi Nativ is a third generation Israeli. He fought as a paratrooper in the Six Day War.

Daniel Nebenzahl is a Co-Founder and CTO at Scribe Security – End to End Software Supply Chain Security. Daniel’s background includes development of cybersecurity solutions, performing and leading cybersecurity research teams.

Yoseph Needelman-Ruiz a.k.a. Yoseph Leib Ibn Mardachya is the author of "Cannabis Chassidis: The Ancient and Emerging Torah of Drugs" (Autonomedia press, 2012) an epic devotional study of Cannabis and other ethneogens in Judaism and its heresies throughout history, into super-modernity, in the hopes of passing on a useful counsel with regards to their use beyond "do" or "don't." He is currently working on a book about Pop Cartoon Kabbalah, and alternates between leading services and sermons in Williamsburg Brooklyn at Cong. Beth Jacob Ohev Sholom, and living in Israel's Elah Valley.

Rabbi David W. Nelson has taught in a wide range of venues, and, following the 2005 publication of his Judaism, Physics and God: Searching for Sacred Metaphors in a Post-Einstein World, has focused increasingly on issues of science and religion. BA from Wesleyan University, Master' Degree and Rabbinic Ordination from Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, PhD from New York University. His rabbinic experience has included five years in a small congregation, fifteen years at CLAL, a think-tank and center for leadership education, five years in a community center, and three years as the primary writer and teacher for the Reform Movement's Israel organization.

Rabbi David A. Nelson, originally from Bridgeport, Connecticut, is a Conservative movement rabbi and chaplain in the United States active in Michigan. A graduate of Brandeis University, he was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1967. He served two years in a pulpit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and three years as an assistant rabbi at Chizuk Amuno in Baltimore before ariving in Detroit in 1972. For over three decades, Rabbi Nelson served as rabbi for Congregation Beth Shalom (Oak Park, Michigan). During this time he served as President of the Conservative Rabbis of Metropolitan Detroit, President of Michigan Branch of Rabbis, President of the Michigan Region of the Rabbinical Assembly, and Chairman of the Rabbinical Assembly’s Member Committee. He directed the Michigan region’s United Synagogue of America and was an active member of the Detroit Round Table of the National Conference of Christians, Muslims and Jews.

NeoHasid.org, founded October 2005, was first created by Rabbi David Seidenberg to help folks integrate ḥasidic song, learning, and nusaḥ into their davenning and communities and to explore embodied Torah. It evolved to focus on eco-Torah and to share liturgy that honors our relationship with the Earth and/or expresses gender parity.

Rabbi Dr. Haviva Ner-David is the Director of Shmaya: A Ritual and Educational Mikveh, and the founding director of Reut: The Center for Modern Jewish Marriage. She has also written Chanah’s Voice: A Rabbi Wrestles with Gender, Commandment, and the Women’s Rituals of Baking, Bathing, and Brightening (2013, Ben Yehudah Press). In 2006, Rabi Ner-David was was given semicha by Rabbi Dr. Aryeh Strikovsky of Tel-Aviv. In 2000 she wrote a book documenting her journey and aspirations as a female rabbi entitled, Life on the Fringes: A Feminist Journey Toward Traditional Rabbinic Ordination. She lives on Kibbutz Ḥannaton in northern Israel with her husband and seven children.

Rabbi Lior Nevo serves as a chaplain at Hebrew SeniorLife, in the Greater Boston Area. She grew up in Jerusalem, Israel, and has a bachelor’s degree in Bible and Jewish Thought from Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She got her master’s degree in Pluralistic Jewish Education in a joint program of Hebrew University and Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion. In 2015 Lior was ordained as a rabbi at HUC-JIR in Jerusalem.

Ruth Nevo (1924- in Johannesburg, S.A.) Israeli professor of humanities, has been a member of the Israel Academy since 1985.

Johannes Niehoff-Panagiotidis (b. 1963) is a German Byzantine scholar. Niehoff received his doctorate in 1994 with the dissertation Koine und Diglossie and was then (until 2000) research assistant to the linguist and Romance scholar Wolfgang Raible at the University of Freiburg. He completed his habilitation in 1998 at the Free University of Berlin for Byzantine and Modern Greek philology. In 2004 he was Associate Professor in the Department of Medieval Studies at the Central European University in Budapest. In 2007 he accepted a professorship for Byzantine Studies at the Free University of Berlin (as the successor to Diether Roderich Reinsch).

Rabbi Ora Nitkin-Kaner serves Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation. She was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario. After earning a BA and an MA from the Center for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto, she moved to New Orleans in 2008. There, she served as an Avodah fellow at Resurrection After Exoneration, an organization founded by death-row exoneree John Thompson (z”l) to help other wrongfully convicted men following their release from prison. While pursuing ordination at Philadelphia’s Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, Rabbi Ora interned in every area of rabbinic work, including congregations, campuses, adult and youth education, community organizing, and chaplaincy. Rabbi Ora was ordained by RRC in June 2016, and spent the following year working as an oncology chaplain at New Orleans’ East Jefferson General Hospital. Rabbi Ora began her tenure at Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation on September 1, 2017.

Dr. Tzvi Novick is the Abrams Jewish Thought and Culture Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. He has an M.A. from Yeshiva University and a Ph.D. from Yale. His research focuses on law and ethics in rabbinic Judaism. He has also written on topics in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism, and on Jewish liturgical poetry (piyyut) from late antiquity.

Nurit Novis-Deutsch is a senior lecturer at the department of Learning, Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Haifa. She is a psychologist of religion, values, morality and identity, and her research focuses on interactions between the personal and cultural domains. Her methods combine qualitative, quantitative and theoretical scholarship. Some of her topics of research and publication include the development of both/and reasoning and its relation to religiosity, domain-related pluralistic thinking, ultra-Orthodox Jews in higher education, contemporary religious subjectivities of young adults globally (the YARG project), God concepts among children and adults, Holocaust memory and education in relation to national social role heritage, and more.

Avi Novis-Deutsch is Dean of the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary. Ordained as a Masorti rabbi by the SRS in 2003, Rabbi Novis-Deutsch also has an MA in Jewish Studies from JTS. He served for nine years as a pulpit rabbi at two Masorti congregations in Israel, most recently, at Haminyan Hamishpachti Masorti Kfar Veradim. Rabbi Novis-Deutsch also worked for two years as a Jewish educator in Berkeley and in the Bay Area, California.

Shlomit Nulman is a special education teacher in Israel. She loves teaching Tanakh to her students and bring the sources to modern life and help bring out enjoyment of these texts, regardless of religion and beliefs. As an educator, she helps to mediate texts and ideas with her students and in general to help all people who want to learn.

Hayyim Obadyah is retired from a career in nonprofit management (specializing in emergency planning, especially coordination of social services after major disaster) and now spends considerable time as a student of Masoretic Studies, as well as developing liturgy.

Dr. Peter W. Ochs (born 1950) is the Edgar M. Bronfman Professor of Modern Judaic Studies at the University of Virginia, where he has served since 1997. He is an influential thinker whose interests include Jewish philosophy and theology, modern and postmodern philosophical theology, pragmatism, and semiotics. Ochs coined the term "scriptural reasoning" and is the co-founder (with Anglican theologian David F. Ford) of the Society for Scriptural Reasoning, which promotes interfaith dialog among Christians, Jews, and Muslims through scriptural study groups. He is also a co-founder of the Children of Abraham Institute, which promotes interfaith study and dialog among members of the Abrahamic religions.

The Office of the Chief Rabbi is the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth and is the senior rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations. The present incumbent is Ephraim Mirvis who leads the Office of the Chief Rabbi (OCR).

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, commonly known as the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) or the United Nations Human Rights Office, is a department of the Secretariat of the United Nations that works to promote and protect human rights that are guaranteed under international law and stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. The office was established by the United Nations General Assembly on 20 December 1993 in the wake of the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights.

 

Daniel Olson is a doctoral candidate in Education and Jewish Studies at NYU, studying disability and inclusion in Jewish education.

Aylam Orian is an American actor, who plays the role of Dr. Wilhelm Brücke, the high-ranking Nazi officer, occultist and series main antagonist, in the MGM limited web series Stargate Origins (2018). As a vegan and supporter of animal rights, Orian founded the National Animal Rights Day in Israel and wrote the Declaration of Animal Rights.

Rabbi Samantha Kahn received a BA, cum laude, from the University of Florida, majoring in Political Science and Religion. She earned her Rabbinic Ordination and master's degree in Hebrew Letters and Jewish non-profit management from Hebrew Union College, Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles. At the University of Miami's Hillel, she developed programs for Jewish students to engage with Israel. Her background includes student rabbi at Temple Shalom, Yakima, WA, intern at Ronald Regan Medical Center, Los Angeles, and Temple Emanuel, Beverly Hills, and Assistant Rabbi at Congregation Emanu El, Houston, TX. With her warm and vibrant manner, she brings a love of all things Jewish to Temple Sinai. Rabbi Kahn and her husband, Matt, have two children, Roey and Stella Mae.

Sarah Osborne is the founder (in 2021) of the organization, A Mitzvah to Eat.

Nina Paley is an American cartoonist, animator and free culture activist.

Jonathan Avram Panitz is a Conservative Jewish rabbi, patient chaplain, and retired Commander Chaplain for the U.S. Navy. He received his ordination from Leo Baeck College in 1975 after which he served congregations in Salisbury, Maryland and Fall River, Massachusetts. In 1980, he became a chaplain for the U.S. Navy. From 1995-1998, he served as the Jewish chaplain for the U.S. Naval Academy.

Eden "Eprhyme" Pearlstein is a Brooklyn-based Hip Hop Artist, Author and All Around Good Guy. Active in both the Jewish and Secular arts/music world, he collaborates closely with creative organizations such as Shemspeed, The Iyyun Center and K Records. He is 1/2 of Darshan- the musical midrash project that combines the soaring Songwriting of Shir Yaakov and Eprhyme's deep and probing raps.

Rabbi Jonathan Perlman serves New Light Congregation, Pittsburgh.

Erin Piateski is a patent examiner who holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Maryland and a master's degree from MIT, both in mechanical engineering. Piateski learned Esperanto in 1995 and when she is not working on Esperanto projects, her hobbies include reading science fiction, listening to radio dramas, and international cooking.

Stephen H. Pinsky, born in New York City, was ordained a “Rabbi in Israel” in 1971 by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York and awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity by his alma-mater in 1996. Rabbi Pinsky began his rabbinic career as the Assistant and then the Associate Rabbi of Temple Beth-El in Great Neck, New York. Five years later, he was named Rabbi of Temple Sinai of Bergen County located in Tenafly, New Jersey. In July 1981, Rabbi Pinsky was invited to become the Associate Rabbi of Temple Israel. He was elected Senior Rabbi of Temple Israel in 1986 and remained in that position until 1991 when he was named Regional Director of the Midwest Council of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations – now known as the Union for Reform Judaism. During his tenure in Minneapolis, Rabbi Pinsky was part of a national movement dedicated to moving Reform worship toward a more traditional style including a wider use of Hebrew in the liturgy, a greater emphasis on ritual as well as an increase in the depth and breadth of Jewish education for young people and adults. In the larger Minnesota community, Rabbi Pinsky was appointed to a committee by the late Governor Rudy Perpich whose purpose was to establish an institution which would serve the humanitarian needs of its citizens. Along with the Presidents of the University of Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic, the Dean of the University of Minnesota’s Law School and other state notables, Rabbi Pinsky helped establish the Center for the Victims of Torture which he later served as Co-Chair of its Board. One of his most significant accomplishments was helping to develop the Interfaith Circles program which was created to foster Christian Jewish dialogue which is still in use nationwide. While serving as the UAHC Regional Director in St. Louis, Rabbi Pinsky continued his work in community outreach by serving as Vice-President of the St. Louis Chapter of the American Jewish Congress, Secretary of the St. Louis Rabbinic Association and President of the Interfaith Partnership of Greater St. Louis, the largest interfaith organization in Missouri. He also served on the Boards of the St. Louis Jewish Federation and its Jewish Community Relations Council. In July of 1996, Rabbi Stephen H. Pinsky became the spiritual leader of Temple Beth Torah in Wellington, Florida – a Reform congregation serving the western communities of Palm Beach County.

Rabbi Leib Pinter (1944-) was born in Brooklyn, New York. In 1971, he founded a small school, the B'nai Torah Institute. In 1972, President Gerald Ford spoke at an annual dinner in support of the school. With the receipt of public funds, the school expanded quickly, and so too, increased scrutiny, beginning with taking public funds for distributing rotten kosher school lunches. On 15 February 1975, he offered the prayer of the guest chaplain before the US House of Representatives. It wasn't five days before the New York Times reported that he and his institute were under three separate federal investigations. By mid-1978 the Institute was defunct and Rabbi Pinter's career was in shambles after pleading guilty to a charge of bribing Representative Daniel J. Flood, himself under investigation at the time by a organized-crime task force of the Justice Department and other agencies. Early in the 2000s, Pinter helped lead an effort into censoring the work of Rabbi Natan Slifkin. In 2008, he was indicted for Wire Fraud Conspiracy after misappropriating refinanced mortgage loans as an executive of Olympia Mortgage Corp. He is the author of Don't Give Up (2004).

Josh Polak is the proprietor of Guitars of Pikesville; a small family operated shop in Pikesville, Maryland. He has been teaching guitar in the Pikesville area for many years while performing with his daughter Esther whose whistle playing can be heard on the Guitars of Pikesville's Youtube channel.

Louis Polisson is a musician, poet, and rabbi, ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2018, where he also earned an MA in Jewish Thought focusing on Kabbalah and Ḥasidut. He currently serves as the Associate Rabbi and Music Director at Congregation Beth Sholom in Teaneck, New Jersey. He previously served for five years as the solo clergy of Congregation Or Atid in Wayland, Massachusetts. Louis and his wife Gabriella Feingold released an album of original Jewish and nature-based spiritual folk music in November 2018 - listen here.

Marcia Prager is a rabbi, artist, liturgist and therapist, living and working in the West Mt. Airy community of Philadelphia. She is a graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia where she received Rabbinic ordination and a Master of Hebrew Letters degree in 1989, and a D.Min honoris causa in 2014. In 1990, she also received the personal smicha (rabbinic ordination) of her mentor and teacher, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi z”l, with whom she continued to work closely for over twenty years. In 2010, Rabbi Marcia was selected by the Jewish Daily Forward as one of the Top Fifty Female Rabbis.

Sephardic Pizmonim Project is devoted to the preservation and dissemination of all Sephardic Middle Eastern pizmonim (songs), cantorial and liturgical traditions.

The Rabbinical Assembly (RA) is the international association of Conservative rabbis. The RA was founded in 1901 to shape the ideology, programs, and practices of the Conservative movement. It publishes prayerbooks and books of Jewish interest, and oversees the work of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards for the Conservative movement. It organizes conferences and coordinates the Joint Placement Commission of the Conservative movement. Members of the RA serve as rabbis, educators, community workers and military and hospital chaplains around the world. Rabbis ordained by Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University (California), The Seminario Rabínico Latinoamericano (Buenos Aires, Argentina), The Zacharias Frankel College (Berlin, Germany) and The Schechter Rabbinical Seminary (Jerusalem, Israel) automatically become members of the RA upon their ordination. Rabbis whose ordination is from other seminaries and yeshivas may also be admitted to the RA. As of 2010, there were 1,648 members of the RA. The majority of RA members serve in the United States and Canada, while more than ten percent of its rabbis serve in Israel and many of its rabbis serve in Latin America, in the countries of Europe, Australia, and Africa.

Since 1991, Richard Boruch Rabinowitz has served as Executive Director of Development for the kiruv organization, Aish International.

Rabbi Amy Rader is executive director of the Neshamah Institue. Rabbi Rader was ordained by The Jewish Theological Seminary as a conservative rabbi and served as rabbi at B’nai Torah Congregation in Boca Raton, Florida for 11 years. In January 2011, she founded The Neshamah Institute, an independent Jewish community without walls. The Neshamah Institute’s mission is to reach out to unaffiliated Jews in South Palm Beach County and offer a fresh, personal and meaningful way to bring Judaism into their lives. Rabbi Rader is grateful to the team of musicians, teachers and volunteers who have been her partners in cultivating Neshamah into a thriving, authentic, relevant, spiritual Jewish community. Now entering our 10th year, Neshamah is a congregation of over 950 families with 250 students in our school and over 50 bnai mitzvah a year. Rabbi Rader feels blessed to be able to teach and share Jewish life with the open-minded, adventurous Jewish families in South Florida. In 2004, Rabbi Rader was awarded the Rabbi Simon Greenberg prize for Rabbinic Leadership by The Jewish Theological Seminary and has been recognized as an outstanding young leader in the South Florida Jewish community.

Avital Raff is the director of social action and community engagement at the Berkeley Hillel.

Rabbi Jonah Rank is President and Rosh Yeshivah of Hebrew Seminary: A Rabbinical School for the Deaf and Hearing. An award-winning Jewish songwriter, Rabbi Rank earned an MA in Jewish Thought and was ordained in 2015 at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Rabbi Rank has been involved in Jewish education for many years and served as the Maskil (“Teacher-of-Tradition”) at the Shaar Shalom Synagogue in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where his spouse, Rabbi Dr. Raysh Weiss, served as Senior Rabbi. While living in Canada, Rabbi Rank initiated the annual Halifax Communal Beit Midrash, and collaborated with the community’s Education Committee in rebooting the Halifax Joint Hebrew School. Following his family’s return to the U.S, he became the Director of the Shul School at Kehilat HaNahar in New Hope, Pennsylvania. While managing the supplementary school, Rabbi Rank co-led a Virtual Youth Arts Beit Midrash serving youth across five states, designed a virtual reality Purim carnival, and created curricular materials for young Jews to engage with Jewish notions of responsibility towards marginalized communities and to the planet. Rabbi Rank has authored several academic articles, served as the Managing Editor of Zeramim: An Online Journal of Applied Jewish Studies, and is currently editing Siddur Kanfey HaShekhinah, a forthcoming traditional Ashkenazi Hebrew prayer book, where the language referring to God is with feminine grammar. An advocate for civic causes, Rabbi Rank was appointed in 2021 to the Environmental Advisory Council in the Township of Lower Makefield, Pennsylvania. Rabbi Rank’s recently moved with his family to Natick, Massachusetts.

Laurie Rappeport lives in Safed, Israel. She teaches about Israel and Judaism online to day school and afternoon school students in North America and is involved in Safed tourism. She has studied Safed's history as a refuge for Jews and kabbalists who fled the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions and this has fueled her interest in the history of the first Jews in Colonial United States.

Eyal Raviv teaches in Texas with Teach for America ."I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing – a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process – in integral function of the universe." -- R. Buckminster Fuller, I Seem to Be a Verb (1970)

Sandra Razieli is a Cultural Anthropologist, Movement Educator (raziyoga.com) and rabbi (mauirabbi.com). She is also a co-founder of Las Brujas football club. Sandra served for over 15 years as Bar/Bat Mitzvah Program Director and Spiritual Leader at Kehilla Community Synagogue in Piedmont, CA. She currently lives on Maui, where she facilitates creative ritual and educational experiences for the Jewish Congregation of Maui as well as visiting travelers.

Moshe Razieli is a retired computer systems analyst living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He celebrated his Bar Mitzvah in Tel-Aviv in 1948 and became a platoon commander in the IDF at the age of 18. In his retirement he enjoys spending time with his wife and two children as well as playing his two favorite stringed instruments—the piano and the tennis racquet. He loves exploring Hebrew language and is proud that younger Israelis tell him that he speaks Hebrew like Ḥayyim Naḥman Bialik.

Yosef Razin is a Ph.D. candidate in Human-Robot Trust at the Georgia Institute of Technology, with an avid interest in Jewish history and a love for Jewish Studies.

Colman Reaboi is a rabbi, cantor, husband, father, nature enthusiast and animal-lover. Rabbi/Cantor Reaboi uses his voice and words to convey Judaism through the filter of Ḥesed-Compassion and understanding. He is currently the Spiritual Leader of an unaffiliated progressive congregation in Massachusetts. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Rabbi Yaakov Reef is the Program Manager at Hazon’s Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. He has over a decade of experience as an activist for the environment and for LGBTQ social causes. He loves contra dancing, reading science fiction novels, and is an avid backpacker.

John C. Reeves (Ph.D., Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion) is Blumenthal Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Religious Studies at the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. A native North Carolinian, he came to Charlotte in 1996 after serving as Assistant and then Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Winthrop University. Much of his work probes the margins of conventionally conceived categories, exploring the overlaps and commonalities discernible among a host of Near Eastern fringe groups and texts which inhabit the twilight realms of cosmic arcana, apocalyptic fervor, and religious dualism in late antiquity and the medieval era. He maintains this site as a resource for his students, professional colleagues, and other interested parties.

Rabbi Mira Regev is the Head of Content and Culture for the Israel Movement for Reform and progressive Judaism.

Dr. Sara Reguer is professor of Judaic studies. She has been chair of the department since 1985. In addition to teaching at Brooklyn College, she taught at Yeshiva University, Hofstra University and the University of Naples, Italy.

Originally from Fairfield, New Jersey, Rabbi Steven I. Rein received his rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary where he also earned an M.A. in Talmud and Rabbinics from the Graduate School at JTS. He joined Agudas Achim Congregation in 2014 after five years as the Assistant Rabbi of Park Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan. Outside of his synagogue responsibilities, Rabbi Rein is a reserve chaplain in the United States Air Force. Commissioned in 2005 he has served at Hanscom AFB, MA, the United States Air Force Academy, CO, Wright Patterson AFB, OH, Bolling Air Force Base, DC, Langley AFB, VA, and Joint Base Andrews, MD. Rabbi Rein was promoted to Major in October 2017 and currently serves as the Jewish Chaplain for Arlington National Cemetery. He has also served since 2011 as a member of the Religious Leadership Advisory Board of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Rabbi Victor Reinstein (b. 1950) originally from Boston is a Conservative rabbi in the United States. In 2005, with his wife Mieke, he co-founded Nehar Shalom Community Synagogue in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, an egalitarian shtibl committed to traditional Jewish practice and progressive social and political values. Before then he was the school rabbi and a teacher at the Solomon Schechter Day School in Newton, MA. From 1982-1998. he served as the rabbi of Canada’s oldest synagogue, Congregation Emanu-El in Victoria, British Columbia. Rabbi Reinstein was the first director of the United Synagogue’s Keruv/Outreach program to interfaith families. Blessed to make yet another life and career transition, he spends his days engaged in writing, teaching, and communal work. Learning of life in caring for the dead, he is an active member of the Community Ḥevra Ḳadisha of Greater Boston. Committed to interfaith dialogue, he has been particularly involved in building bridges between Jews and Muslims. Engaging Torah as a sourcebook for nonviolence by which to challenge and transform violence in the text and in our lives, he seeks at the core of his work to help fulfill God’s hope for a world of justice and peace.

Arnold E. Resnicoff (born 1946) is a Conservative rabbi who began his career serving as a military officer and then as a military chaplain. He served in Vietnam and Europe before attending rabbinical school after which he was a U.S. Navy Chaplain for almost 25 years. After the Vietnam War, he promoted the creation of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and delivered the closing prayer at its 1982 dedication. Rabbi Resnicoff was present at the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing and the following year, President Ronald Reagan shared Rabbi Resnicoff's eyewitness account. After retiring from the military he became the National Director of Interreligious Affairs for the American Jewish Committee and served as Special Assistant (for Values and Vision) to the Secretary and Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force, serving at the equivalent military rank of Brigadier General. Resnicoff holds several degrees, including an honorary doctorate. His awards include the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Department of the Air Force Decoration for Exceptional Civilian Service, and the Chapel of Four Chaplains Hall of Heroes Gold Medallion.

 

  

Rabbi Yosef Zvi Rimon, born in London, January 18, 1968, is an Israeli Religious Zionist rabbi, author, lecturer and Posek who serves as rabbi of the Gush Etzion Regional Council and the Ashkenazi Synagogue of Alon Shvut Darom.He is Rosh Yeshiva of the Jerusalem College of Technology (Machon Lev) and a Rosh Kollel at Yeshivat Har Etzion. As of March 2024, Rav Rimon was named President of the World Mizrachi Movement.

Rabbi and cantor Eva Robbins is co-founder of N'vay Shalom with her husband Rabbi Stephen Robbins, on the Faculty of the Academy for Jewish Religion, California, and officiant of lifecycle ceremonies in Los Angeles. She is the author of Spiritual Surgery: A Journey of Healing Mind, Body, and Spirit (about the Mishkan) and is a visiting columnist for the Jewish Journal of Southern California. She is on the Board of the Sandra Caplan Community Beit Din as well as participating in conversion ceremonies and a teacher of Torah and Jewish meditation.

 

Brant Rosen is the founding rabbi of Tzedek Chicago and the author of Wrestling in the Daylight: A Rabbis Path to Palestinian Solidarity (2012) and Songs After the Revolution: New Jewish Liturgy (2018). In 2020, he was named as a Topol Fellow at Harvard Divinity School.

Rabbi Dr. Bernhard H. Rosenberg is rabbi emeritus of Congregation Beth-El, Edison, New Jersey. He received his ordination and Doctorate of Education from Yeshiva University in New York and a Doctor of Divinity from the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York. He taught at Rutgers University in New Jersey and Yeshiva University in New York. He is the author of a number of books including Theological and Halachic Reflections on the Holocaust, A Guide for the Jewish Mourner, Contemplating the Holocaust, What the Holocaust Means to Me: Teenagers Speak Out, Thoughts on the Holocaust-Where Was God Where Was Man–Teenagers Reflect on Major Themes of the Holocaust, The Holocaust as seen Through Film, among others. He received the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr Humanitarian Award and the Chaplain of the Year Award from The New York Board of Rabbis for his efforts during and following 9/11. On June 10, 2002 Rabbi Rosenberg was presented with the annual Rabbi Israel Mowshowitz Award by The New York Board of Rabbis. Rabbi Rosenberg appears frequently on radio and TV and has published hundreds of articles regarding the Holocaust. He serves on the New Jersey State Holocaust Commission and is the Chairman of the Holocaust Commission of the New York Board of Rabbis.

Josh Rosenberg is a lifelong Philadelphian, alumni of Jews in the Woods, and regular at the National Havurah Committee's Summer Institute.

Seymour Rosenbloom served as rabbi of Congregation Adath Jeshurun in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania from 1978-2014. He is a 1966 graduate of the University of Rochester, and was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1972. Prior to coming to AJ, he served Adat Shalom Synagogue in Farmington Hills, MI, a suburb of Detroit. Rabbi Rosenbloom served many community organizations, and led many congregational and community groups to Israel and Eastern Europe. He pioneered a special sister relationship between Adath Jeshurun and Congregation Hod VeHadar in Kfar Saba, Israel, and inspired many members of AJ to be generous supporters of this sister congregation. Rabbi Rosenbloom has a special interest in "Jewish men's issues," and has lectured and written on the subject using Jewish Biblical materials and the modern texts of Robert Bly, among others. Rabbi Rosenbloom was a member and leader of the Rabbinical Assembly, the worldwide professional organization of Conservative Rabbis, until he broke with the organization on the subject of rabbinic officiation at interfaith wedding ceremonies in 2016. Adath Jeshurun is noted for its unique liturgy, expressed through the Seder Avodah prayer books, originally edited by Rabbi Max D. Klein. Rabbi Rosenbloom extensively edited and revised the Maḥzor Seder Avodah which was issued in 2004, and the Sabbath, Weekdays, and Yom Tov edition, which was inaugurated in 2008 as part of the congregation’s 150th anniversary celebration. In 2013, a new volume, Seder Avodah for a House of Shiva, was introduced.

April Rosenblum, IBCLC, is a Philadelphia based lactation consultant and progressive activist.

Lilah Rosenfield is an undergraduate student studying community and regional planning at Cornell University.

David G. Roskies is Emeritus Professor of Yiddish Literature and Culture at the Jewish Theological Seminary. In 1981 (with the late Alan Mintz), he cofounded Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History, and served for eighteen years as editor-in-chief of the New Yiddish Library. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2012. Born in Montreal, Canada, in 1948, he is a product of its Yiddish secular schools.

Rabbi Jack M. Rosoff is rabbi emeritus at Congregation B’nai Israel, (Rumson Jewish Center, New Jersey) serving as rabbi for 34 years, from 1964 to 1998. He came to Congregation B’nai Israel after serving as a Jewish chaplain at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. A graduate of Harvard College, Hebrew Teachers’ College, Hebrew University, and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, he also has a masters degree in clinical and counseling psychology from Columbia University and an Honorary Doctorate of Divinity from the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Rabbi Efrat Rotem was ordained through the Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem in 2015. She served as the rabbi of Kehilat HaLev in central Tel Aviv, a member congregation of the Daniel Centers for Progressive Judaism. She also designed and taught courses and seminars on her rabbinical outlook, which integrates pluralist Judaism, critical feminism, and queer identity and worldview. She holds an MA in Literature from Tel Aviv University and has translated texts from English to Hebrew. She also studied Creative Writing at Haifa University.

Rabbi Roth hails from Brooklyn, New York City, and was ordained in 1972 by the Brooklyn Rabbinical Seminary. For 20 years, he has served as the founding rabbi of Congregation Eitz Chaim in Passaic, New Jersey

Mendel Roth is a composer, musician, and mashpia.

Rabbi Michael Rothbaum is the spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Elohim in Acton, Massachusetts. He is a graduate of the Academy of Jewish Religion in New York (AJR-NY) where he received his Rabbinic S’mikhah (ordination) in 2006. He graduated from the New College of Florida in 1997 with a BA in Public Policy/Economics. Rabbi Rothbaum was the Campus Rabbi at Hillels of Westchester (NY), during which he served as sole rabbinic figure for students at Sarah Lawrence College and Purchase College. He has served as Director of Congregational Learning at Kehillat Lev Shalem – the Woodstock, NY Jewish Congregation and Rabbi Rothbaum was the rabbi at the Philipstown Reform Synagogue in Cold Spring, NY. Rabbi Rothbaum was Co-Chair of the Bay Area Regional Council of Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice, as well as Rabbi-Educator at Beth Chaim Congregation in Danville, CA. Rabbi Rothbaum has spoken and taught widely, addressing groups as varied as Moishe House, Jewish Community Relations Council, and Nuns on the Bus. He has appeared in front of audiences at the US Senate and House of Representatives, Oakland City Council, and the New York State Democratic Party. His writing has been included in the Forward, Tikkun, the Huffington Post, and the anthology, “Peace, Justice, and Jews: Reclaiming Our Tradition” (2007).

Limor Rubin is the Israel CEO at The Honey Foundation for Israel

I write,
to bring an ounce of medicine,
the perfect dosage
to awaken the healing potential within me and you

I am an observant Jewish transgender man. My transgender identity is deeply tied to my Jewish identity, and I attempt to represent this intersection in my artwork and religious expression.

Amanda Rush is an IT professional specializing on making Internet tools and services accessible to the blind and visually-impaired, and to all users with or without disabilities.

Andreas Rusterholz is a professor of Theology (New Testament and Hermeneutics) at Kwansei Gakuin University School of Humanities Department of Literature and Linguistics. He translated (together with Takako Noguchi, 1943-2017) Jüdische Religion by Günter Stemberger (Beck 1995) into Japanese: Yudayakyo - Rekishi, Shinko, Bunka [Judaism: History, Faith, Culture], Kyobunkwan 2015.

Danya Ruttenberg is an American rabbi, editor, and author. She was named one of The Jewish Week's "36 Under 36" in 2010 (36 most influential leaders under age 36), and the same year was named one of the top 50 most influential women rabbis by The Jewish Daily Forward. When she was in college her mother died of breast cancer, and Ruttenberg practiced Jewish mourning rituals, which she said allowed her to "make friends with Judaism, to be open to it"; in 2008 she published a memoir of her spiritual awakening titled Surprised by God: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Religion (Beacon Press). This memoir was a finalist for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature. She was ordained in 2008 by the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles. In 2016, she published Nurture the Wow: Finding Spirituality in the Frustration, Boredom, Tears, Poop, Desperation, Wonder, and Radical Amazement of Parenting with Flatiron Books, which was named a National Jewish Book Award finalist and a PJ Library Parents' Choice selection. Ruttenberg is the editor of the 2001 anthology Yentl's Revenge: The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism, and the 2009 anthology The Passionate Torah: Sex and Judaism. She is also a contributing editor to Lilith and Women in Judaism. She and Rabbi Elliot Dorff are co-editors of three books for the Jewish Publication Society’s Jewish Choices/Jewish Voices series: Sex and Intimacy, War and National Security, and Social Justice. She served as the Senior Jewish Educator at Tufts University Hillel, and subsequently Campus Rabbi at Northwestern Hillel and Director of Education for the campus dialogue program Ask Big Questions. She is currently serving as Rabbi-in-Residence at Avodah: Sparking Jewish Leaders, Igniting Social Change. (from her article on Wikipedia)

A social and educational activist residing in Be'er Sheva, Rabbi Ḥagit Sabag Yisrael is part of the faculty of the Jewish Studies department in Ono Academic College. She facilitates study in batei midrash in the Kolot and Bina organizations and has established a number of batei midrash in development towns around Israel. Ḥagit serves as a consultant to different organizations on the topic of Israeli Judaism, provides spiritual guidance for families and individuals, and creates and leads Jewish life cycle ceremonies. She is one of the founders of the Forum for Jewish Renewal in the Negev, which she currently chairs, and is also a member of an inter-religious initiative in the Negev. Ḥagit's research, study and action all aim at the development of a beit midrash language of study which will assist educators and therapists in their work, with regard to psychology and Judaism, Mizraḥi feminism and the development of Jewish life cycle ceremonies.

Rabbi Dr. Sabath Beit-Halachmi is the Inaugural Senior Rabbi at Har Sinai-Oheb Shalom Congregation in Baltimore, MD. She is an American and Israeli Rabbi, writer, teacher, speaker, mentor. Grateful wife, blessed mother of three amazing kids, ḥevruta, friend. (Find her publications at: https://huc.academia.edu/RachelSabath.)

Rabbi Ofer Sabath-Beit Halachmi directs AspaklariA (paths for renewing Jewish creativity) and edits the El Halev compendium of original prayers and blessings for lifecycle events.

Lord Jonathan Henry Sacks, Baron Sacks MBE (Hebrew: Yaakov Tsvi, יעקב צבי; 8 March 1948 - 7 November 2020) was a British Orthodox rabbi, philosopher, theologian, author and politician. He served as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013. As the spiritual head of the United Synagogue, the largest synagogue body in the UK, he was the Chief Rabbi of those Orthodox synagogues, but was not recognized as the religious authority for the Haredi Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations or for the progressive movements such as Masorti, Reform and Liberal Judaism. As Chief Rabbi, Sacks formally carried the title of Av Beit Din (head) of the London Beth Din. He is now known as the Emeritus Chief Rabbi. Since stepping down as Chief Rabbi, in addition to his international travelling and speaking engagements and prolific writing, Sacks has served as the Ingeborg and Ira Rennert Global Distinguished Professor of Judaic Thought at New York University and as the Kressel and Ephrat Family University Professor of Jewish Thought at Yeshiva University. He has also been appointed as Professor of Law, Ethics and the Bible at King's College London. He won the Templeton Prize (awarded for spiritual affirmation) in 2016. He was also a Senior Fellow to the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights. (via wikipedia)

Elli Sacks is a poet, translator, husband and father of three, living in Modi’in Israel.

Jeffrey Saks (born March 25, 1969) is a Modern Orthodox rabbi, educator, writer and editor. Saks has published widely on Jewish thought, education, and literature. Born into a secular Jewish family and raised in suburban New Jersey, Saks became interested in religious observance in high school through the influence of a local rabbi and the NCSY youth movement.

Rachel Salston, Soferet STaM is a current third year student at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies. This year, her program brings her to study at the Conservative Yeshiva. Rachel is an alumna of Brandeis University, Yeshivat Hadar, and Drisha. She has offered her services as a gabbai'it and leyning/davening coordinator for several independent egalitarian minyanim. In her spare time, Rachel enjoys sewing and quiliting, baking, and scribing.

Rabbi David Saltzman, born in Brooklyn, New York, attended Flatbush Yeshiva High School, and graduated from Brooklyn College. Ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1965, he served as Navy chaplain in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and later with the marines in Vietnam. Besides serving congregations in Massachusetts, New York, Illinois, and Florida, in 1979 he began as rabbi for the Aventura-Turnberry Jewish Center in Florida. (We lack any additional details on Rabbi Saltzman's career. If you know more, please contact us.)

Honi Sanders is a neuroscience researcher in Massachusetts. His family birkon, Siman l'Vanim, was published by Dimus Parrhesia Press in 2019.

Akiva Sanders is a Neubauer Graduate Fellow specializing in Mesopotamian Art and Archaeology. He is interested in mobility during the rise and fall of one of the world’s first urban networks in northern Mesopotamia. Specifically, his research is concerned with mutually transformative interactions on the edges of this network with highland societies of the Kura Araxes Cultural Tradition. Previously, Akiva has worked on genetic diversity in present-day highland Georgia and other regions, and he has published an article on the application of a new methodology for analyzing the sex of ceramic producers to episodes of state-formation at Tell Leilan, Syria. Akiva has excavated in Israel, Jordan, Turkey, and Georgia.

David Nathan Saperstein is an American rabbi, lawyer, and Jewish community leader who served as United States Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. He previously served as the director and chief legal counsel at the Union for Reform Judaism's Religious Action Center for more than 30 years.

Henry “Hank” Sapoznik is an award winning author, record and radio producer and performer of traditional Yiddish and American music.

Jonathan D. Sarna is the Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History in the department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Jason Schapera is the Digitizing Specialist at the HUC-JIR Klau Library in Cincinnati.

Ronald Schechter received his B.A. from the University of Michigan (1987), his M.A. from the University of Chicago (1988) and his Ph.D. from Harvard University (1993). His book, Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715-1815 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), won the American Historical Association’s Leo Gershoy Award and the Society for French Historical Studies’ David Pinkney Prize, and it was a finalist for the Koret Jewish Book Award in the category of History. Schechter is also the author (with Liz Clarke, illustrator) of Mendoza the Jew: Boxing, Manliness, and Nationalism. A Graphic History (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). He is the editor of The French Revolution: The Essential Readings (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), and the translator and editor of Nathan the Wise by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing with Related Documents (Boston and New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004). He is also the editor of Shifting Boundaries, Rethinking Paradigms: The Significance of French Jewish History, a special issue of Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques 32:1 (Spring 2006). Among the venues of his journal articles have been Past and Present, Representations and Eighteenth-Century Studies. His most recent book is A Genealogy of Terror in Eighteenth-Century France (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2018). Schechter has been a visiting fellow at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, at the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies (Princeton University), and the Polonsky Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2019-2020) for his book project, “The Secret Library of Marie Antoinette.”

Rabbi Solomon Schiff has been the Director of the Greater Miami Jewish Federation's Community Chaplaincy Service since 1966 and the Executive Vice President of the Rabbinical Association of Greater Miami since 1964; he continues to serve as a Rabbi Emeritus and consultant for both. Ordained by Rabbi Moshe Feinstein of the Mesifta Tifereth Jerusalem Rabbinical Seminary in New York, Rabbi Schiff received a B.A. in Political Science at Brooklyn College, an M.A. in Counseling at the University of Miami, and a Doctorate of Pastoral Counseling at the Hebrew Theological College in Skokie, Illinois.

Mark Schiftan is rabbi of The Temple–Congregation Ohabai Sholom. He came to The Temple in 1999 from Temple Emanu-El, an historic urban congregation in San Jose, California. Having served as rabbi there since 1994, Mark had led another Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco, California, serving from 1987 until 1994. Rabbi Schiftan received his Bachelor of Arts degree magna cum laude from San Francisco State University. Hebrew Union College of Los Angeles awarded Rabbi Schiftan’s Master of Arts in Hebrew Letters, and he was ordained at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger lives in Alon Shvut, Israel, and is one of the founders of Roots/Shorashim שורשים/Judur جذور, The Palestinian Israeli Grassroots Initiative for Understanding, Nonviolence and Transformation. Currently he serves as its Director of International Relations. He also is the founder of the American Friends of Roots, a multi-faith organization dedicated to supporting the work of Roots/Shorashim/Judur. Rav Hanan frequently speaks in the United States together with one of his Palestinian partner about the amazing work that Roots/Shorashim/Judur is doing in Judea/Palestine. Prior to the founding of Roots, Rav Hanan spent his whole career teaching Jewish studies in various seminaries, colleges and frameworks in the Jerusalem area, among them the Pardes Institute, Beit Midrash Elul, Nishmat and Yeshivat Bat Ayin. He also spent two years as part of the Judaic Fellows Program in Boca Raton Florida and over ten years in Dallas Texas, first as Rosh Kollel of the Community Kollel and later as founder and Executive Director and Community Rabbinic Scholar for the Jewish Studies Initiative of North Texas. He and his Israeli–born wife Ayala have four grown children and ten grandchildren.

Rabbi Arthur Schneier (born March 20, 1930) is an Austrian-American rabbi and human rights activist. Rabbi Schneier has served for over 50 years as the Senior Rabbi of New York City’s Park East Synagogue. While being honored with the Presidential Citizens Medal from President Bill Clinton in 2001, Rabbi Schneier was described as “a Holocaust survivor who has devoted a lifetime to overcoming forces of hatred and intolerance and set an inspiring example of spiritual leadership by encouraging interfaith dialog and intercultural understanding, as well as promoting the cause of religious freedom around the world.”

Rabba Melissa Scholten-Gutierrez is a Jewish educator, programmer, and community builder currently serving as the Manager of the Jewish Camp Initiative at the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta and the Clergy Advisory Chair for MACoM (Metro Atlanta Community Mikvah). She received semikhah (rabbinic ordination) from Yeshivat Maharat in 2018 and a Masters in Social Work from the University of Illinois in 2006. She has also learned intensively at Nishmat and Pardes in Jerusalem and worked for JEWISHcolorado, JCC Manhattan, Hillel International, and Global Day of Jewish Learning.

Rabbi Julie Schonfeld is the Executive Vice President of the Rabbinical Assembly (RA), the international membership association of Conservative/Masorti rabbis. Rabbi Schonfeld started her career as a congregational rabbi at the historic Society for the Advancement of Judaism on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Prior to being named Executive Vice President, she was Director of Rabbinic Development at the RA, spearheading projects in areas such as public policy, conversion, continuing rabbinic education, professional conduct, mentorship and women’s’ advancement. Rabbi Schonfeld serves on President Obama’s White House Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Newsweek named her one of the 50 most influential Rabbis in America in 2011, 2012 and 2013. She was named by Jewish Women International as a “Woman to Watch” in 2011 and has also been named in the Forward 50. Rabbi Schonfeld is often called upon to represent the Jewish community in national and international settings and is known for her incisive application of Jewish thinking to world events.

Rabbi Joe Schwartz is the founder of Founder, IDRA Beit Café / Beit Tarbut. He is a David Hartman Center Fellow and served for three years as Rabbi of the Conservative Synagogue of Fifth Avenue, a small, traditional-egalitarian synagogue in Greenwich Village.

Stephen Lawrence Schwartz (born March 6, 1948) is a Jewish-American musical theatre lyricist and composer. In a career spanning over five decades, Schwartz has written such hit musicals as Godspell (1971), Pippin (1972), and Wicked (2003). He has contributed lyrics to a number of successful films, including Pocahontas (1995), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), The Prince of Egypt (1998, music and lyrics), and Enchanted (2007). Schwartz has earned numerous accolades including three Grammy Awards, three Academy Awards, and a Golden Globe Award. He has received nominations for six Tony Awards, and a Laurence Olivier Award. He received the Tony Award's Isabelle Stevenson Award in 2015.

Paula Schwebel is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Ryerson University.

Yael Schweid (יעל שביד) born in Jerusalem in 1967, is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, and a member of the Reform congregation Shir Chadash in Tzur Hadassah.

Mel Scult, professor emeritus of Jewish thought at Brooklyn College, received his M.A. from Harvard University and his Ph.D. from Brandeis University. He has taught at Brandeis, Vassar College and the New School for Social Research. Scult is the author of a biography of Mordecai Kaplan, Judaism Faces the Twentieth Century, The Radical American Judaism of Mordecai Kaplan and Communings of the Spirit-The Journals of Mordecai M. Kaplan Vol II, 1934-1941. He has co-edited, with Emmanuel Goldsmith, Dynamic Judaism: The Essential Writings of Mordecai Kaplan and The American Judaism of Mordecai Kaplan.

Cantor Amnon Seelig was born in Munich in 1982 and grew up in Israel. He completed his vocal and music theory studies at the Jerusalem Academy of Music, each with a Bachelor's degree, and his vocal studies with Prof. Donald Litaker at the Karlsruhe University of Music with a Master's degree. Beginning in 2010, a master's degree in Jewish Studies followed at the University of Potsdam, and in 2015 Amnon Seelig was ordained as a synagogue cantor by the Abraham Geiger College. From 2011- 2015, Cantor Amnon Seelig was a regular performer in Berlin synagogues, and from 2015-2017 he was Cantor of the Jewish Community of Düsseldorf. Amnon Seelig is a sought-after baritone and has sung in Israel and in Germany in renowned choirs and vocal ensembles, including the Rundfunk Chor Berlin, the Stuttgarter Kammerchor, the Vokalquintett Berlin, the Vokalensemble Rastatt and the Vokalensemble Berlin. He is a founding member of the trio "Die Drei Kantoren", which has been performing in Jewish communities and various venues throughout Germany since 2013. Since 2017 Amnon Seelig is cantor of the Jewish Community Mannheim.

Shlomo Segal is rabbi of Kehilat Moshe synagogue in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn.

Rabbi Kenneth I. Segel is a Reform movement rabbi in the United State. After graduating from the State University of New York at Buffalo, he studied at Hebrew Union College where he was ordained in 1970. He has served historic congregations in the United States and Canada and has built congregations in New Orleans; Fresno, California; and Scottsdale, Arizona. He’s taught at five universities, published three children’s books and two adult books, and has been invited to offer Opening Prayers before the House of Representatives and the United States Senate. He currently lectures on cruise ships throughout the world.

Dr. Enrico Segre is a physics researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, and a volunteer transcriber with Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders. He is the author of dpanalyzer, a postprocessing tool used by Project Gutenberg.

Rabbi Sam Seicol was ordained as a Reform rabbi in 1978 and is a volunteer at the Vilna Shul in Boston. There he offers classes and programs on a wide range of topics such as Understanding Judaism, Aging and Spirituality, Music and Humor as Pathways to Spiritual Well-being, and History and Development of American Jewish Humor. He is part-time Interfaith Chaplain at Mass Eye and Ear in Boston and part-time Rabbi at Temple Israel of Dover, New Hampshire. Rabbi Seicol has served as MIT’s Hillel Community Education & Engagement Director. He previously worked with congregations as an interim rabbi in Hyannis, Pittsfield, and Tampa. Before that he was the Chaplain/Director of Religious Services at the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center for the Aged in Boston from 1994 through 2003, and has worked in the field of Geriatric Chaplaincy since 1982.

Rabbi David Seidenberg, founder of NeoHasid.org, teaches text and music, Jewish thought and spirituality, in their own right and in relation to ecology and the environment. With smikhah (ordination) from the Jewish Theological Seminary and from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, he has taught at over 100 synagogues, communities, retreats and conferences across North America (and a few in Europe and Israel). Rabbi Seidenberg's teaching empowers learners to become creators of Judaism through deep study and communion with texts and tradition. Areas of specialty include Kabbalah and Ḥasidut, Talmud, davenning, evolution and cosmology, sustainability, Maimonides, Buber, and more. Rabbi Seidenberg has published widely on ecology and Judaism and is the author of Kabbalah and Ecology: God's Image in the More-Than-Human World (Cambridge University Press, 2015).

Margot is a queer, white, Ashkenazi Jew born and raised in Elgin, IL, where her Great Grandpa arrived three generations ago, and where her parents met at the synagogue her Great Grandpa started. Growing up with more than enough, she believes that we would all – even the 1%! – be better off if everyone had enough, and fights to shift this paradigm. An organizer at heart, she does this through supporting the leadership development of individuals and building collective energy and shared decision-making structures around projects that shift power and resources to those at the frontlines of injustice. Margot sees learning about the impacts of privilege and oppression as well as building tools to support the healing of this impact as crucial to being an effective change maker. She seeks to bring her values, skills, and networks to the Jewish community to thinking about what healing looks like with the complex history as well as expanding our concept of and strengthening our obligation to community. In her free time, Margot enjoys crafting, singing, fiddling, cooking, meditating, biking, and bringing people together. Margot is currently the Ḥazon Transformative Experiences Fellow based out of Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center.

Dovi Seldowitz, PhD candidate (Sociology), received his BA (Hons) in Sociology and Anthropology at UNSW and rabbinical ordination from the Central Lubavitch Yeshiva in Brooklyn. His area of research concerns social change in religion, with close attention to the growth of women's leadership in Orthodox and Hasidic communities.

Julie Seltzer is a Torah Scribe and Educator living in the Hudson Valley, New York. She was trained by Jen Taylor Friedman.

Lawrence Sernovitz is the rabbi/executive director of Nafshenu in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Rabbi Sernovitz founded Nafshenu with the understanding that Judaism must be reimagined to remain relevant and meaningful in today’s world. With this in mind, Rabbi Sernovitz set out to create a model of Judaism and Jewish life in Southern New Jersey that would be bold, courageous, and transformative. Assembling a core team of families who also believed in this vision, Nafshenu was created with a foundation that Jewish life first and foremost is about people, about their hopes and dreams. Rabbi Sernovitz has been focused on areas in his rabbinate that include education, interfaith matters, prayer and spirituality, and social justice. He is on the Statewide Clergy Caucus of Faith in New Jersey and received their Faith in Love award in 2018 for his justice work. He also is the recipient of Camden County’s MLK Freedom Medal for his community and justice work. Rabbi Sernovitz also serves as a Chaplain for the Cherry Hill and Maple Shade Police Departments. In April of 2016, Rabbi Sernovitz received the Ambassador Award from the New Jersey Governor’s Council on Mental Health Stigma. Prior to coming to Cherry Hill, he served Old York Road Temple-Beth Am in Abington, Pennsylvania, where he was honored to serve as Vice-Chair of the Montgomery County Advisory Council of the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission and received its Trailblazer Award in 2013 at the annual Civil Rights Luncheon. Rabbi Sernovitz is also passionate about Jewish Genetic Disease Awareness and has spoken around the country, advocating for testing among those of child bearing age.

Rabbi Dahlia Shaham from Haifa holds a LL.B degree in Law and Latin American Studies from the Hebrew University (2003) and a MA.L.D in International Political Economy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (2009). Between 2005-2017 Dahlia worked in policy research and advocacy, strategic planning and programming with some of the leading civil society organizations working to promote a shared, thriving and democratic society in Israel and the Middle East. During the summer war of 2014, as the land was burning, Dahlia began to convene and lead song circles for women in Hebrew and Arabic, and she joined the cantorial team in the Reform synagogue in Ra’anana. Her rabbinic thesis: “Spiritual Feminism in the Promised Land: Journey with D’vorah the Prophetess” presents her insights on the roots of the conflict in our country, and the road to peace and partnership between the genders, tribes and peoples who live in it. She is a member of congregation Ohel Avraham and enjoys working with all Progressive Jewish communities in Haifa.

Founded by Arthur Waskow, the Shalom Center equips activists and spiritual leaders with awareness and skills needed to lead in shaping a transformed and transformative Judaism that can help create a world of peace, justice, healing for the earth, and respect for the interconnectedness of all life.

Rabba Dr. Anat Sharbat serves as part of the clergy team at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale. She is a CLI fellow. Dr. Sharbat graduated from Bar-Ilan University with an M.A. cum laude and a Ph.D. in Talmud from Bar Ilan University, focusing on questions of sexuality and holiness in rabbinic literature. Rabba Sharbat received her ordination from Yeshivat Maharat and served on the rabbinic faculty of Hebrew Institute of Riverdale - The Bayit. After eleven years in New York, she returned to Tel Aviv with her family and is currently founding "Shalom Aleichem - Kehila Ivrit" - a community based in central Tel Aviv. She is one of the Community Coordinators at Hadar in Israel.

Cape Town born Richard Shavei-Tzion (ריצ'רד שביציון) is an autodidact in all his fields of creative activity. At age 18 he was invited to conduct the Pine Street Shul Choir in Johannesburg. Since then he has directed choral ensembles in both South Africa and Israel. For the past 20 years he has directed the Ramatayim Men’s Choir, Jerusalem which has grown from an ad hoc group of 4 friends into an internationally renowned ensemble consisting of 40 singers. He has conducted High Holidays services for the past 35 years in South Africa, Israel, the U.S.A. and Canada and is often invited to lead communal events, singing and playing guitar. He also composes and arranges Jewish music, mainly for the RMC. His poetry has been published widely over decades. In 2015 the Municipal Art Gallery of Jerusalem displayed his photographic works in a solo exhibition which received popular and critical praise. He is the author of the "Prayer for the Preservation of the Environment" which has been read in synagogues of all denominations and other venues around the world and he writes articles of social and cultural interest. He is a regular contributor to the Jerusalem Post.

Andrew Shaw is a Jewish spiritual seeker. He currently lives in Raleigh, NC.

Dr. Avi Shmidman is a Senior Lecturer in the Hebrew Literature department at Bar-Ilan University, and the head of research and development at DICTA: The Israel Center for Text Analysis. His publications focus upon: liturgical piyyutim from the Cairo Genizah; the textual development of birkat ha-mazon; the writings of S. Y. Agnon; and algorithms for computational processing of Hebrew texts.

Rabbi Morris Shmidman was executive director of the Council of Jewish Organizations of Borough Park, and later on president of the World Council of Orthodox Jewish Communities.

A graduate of Hiram College, Rabbi Siegel was ordained in 1982 by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America where he received his Master of Hebrew Letters. Rabbi Siegel came to Anshe Emet in 1982 as Assistant Rabbi and was named Senior Rabbi in 1990. Rabbi Siegel serves on the Executive Council of the Rabbinical Assembly of America, the Jewish Theological Seminary's Chancellor's Rabbinic Cabinet and the Executive Board of MAZON: A Jewish Resource to Hunger. Rabbi Siegel is also a board member of the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago, on the Advisory Board of JLJS – The DePaul University College of Law Center for Jewish Law & Judaic Studies, a past President of the Chicago Board of Rabbis and active leader in the Florence G. Heller Jewish Community Center. Rabbi Siegel is the national Co-Chair of the Heksher Tzedek Commission. Through the use of the Magen Tzedek, the ethical Kosher seal, Heksher Tzedek promises to have a powerful impact on kashrut in particular and American Jewry as a whole. More recently Rabbi Siegel helped to form the Hayom Coalition, an organization of synagogues committed to the transformation of institutions, and a re-envisioning of the Conservative Movement. Rabbi Siegel has been an avid supporter of AIPAC and a leader in the creation of their Synagogue Initiative. In the past few years, Rabbi Siegel has represented the synagogue at the White House on a number of occasions including the United States Honorary Delegation commemorating the 60th Anniversary of Israel's Statehood.

Noam Sienna is a Hebrew calligrapher, scholar, and manuscript artist, with degrees in religion, anthropology, education, and history from Brandeis University, the University of Toronto, and currently in progress at the University of Minnesota. His work explores the relationship between text, image, colour, and light, inspired by the tradition of Jewish books throughout the centuries, and with a particular focus on Jewish communities of the Middle East and North Africa. He has taught about Hebrew calligraphy and Jewish manuscript illumination to groups and individuals of all ages in both academic and hands-on settings. His graduate work in Jewish History and Museum Studies provides his art with deep roots and a commitment to seeing the past come alive again in the process.

David Silber is the founder and dean of Drisha Institute for Jewish Education in New York and Israel. Rabbi Silber received ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. He is a recipient of the Covenant Award for excellence in innovative Jewish education, and is the author of A Passover Haggadah: Go Forth and Learn (Jewish Publication Society 2011) and For Such a Time as This: Biblical Reflections in the Book of Esther (Koren Publishers 2017). He is also a nationally acclaimed lecturer on the Bible. Rabbi Silber is married to Dr. Devora Steinmetz. They have eight children and live in New York City.

Born in the Midwest, Rabbi Silberschein attended Columbia University, Jewish Theological Seminary and the Hebrew University. Ordained in 1981, he made Aliyah to Israel the following year. He teaches piyut, liturgy and classical rabbinic literature to undergraduate and graduate students in Jerusalem and abroad. Throughout his teaching career, Rabbi Silberschein has also served congregations as both rabbi and cantor in such diverse locales as Tokyo, Japan, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and most recently, Savannah Georgia.

Dr. Rabbi Paul Silton served as rabbi of Temple Israel, the largest conservative synagogue in northeast New York. He received his B.A. in Philosophy from Boston University, an M.A. in Hebrew Literature and Rabbinical Ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1970, and a Doctor of Divinity in 1996. At his graduation from the Jewish Theological Seminary, he was awarded the top prize in Pastoral Counseling. While at the Seminary, he studied at the Meir Yeshiva in Brooklyn and taught at religious schools in Fort Lee, New Jersey; Hartford, Connecticut; and Rumson, New Jersey. He also served as Gabbai of the Seminary Synagogue under the supervision of Dr. Rabbi Saul Lieberman and Dr. Rabbi Louis Finkelstein. Prior to his move to Albany, New York, Rabbi Silton spent 6 years as a teacher and Education Director at Camps Ramah in Glen Spey, New York and in Palmer, Massachusetts. Rabbi Silton arrived in Albany after serving as Rabbi at Congregation Beth Israel in North Adams, Massachusetts. While in North Adams, Rabbi Silton taught at Williams College and served as prison chaplain.

Rabbi Robert Silvers serves as Senior Rabbi for Congregation B’nai Israel, a URJ affiliated Reform congregation, in Boca Raton, Florida. He is a graduate of the Rabbinical program at the Academy for Jewish Religion, a pluralistic seminary preparing rabbis and cantors to serve Klal Yisrael – the entire Jewish people. Rabbi Silvers holds the unique distinction of receiving semicha (ordination) from a Beit Din consisting of both Reform and Conservative rabbis.

Daniel Raphael Silverstein is a rabbi, educator, meditation teacher and MC/poet. He lives in Israel with his family, where he directs Applied Jewish Spirituality, an online portal which makes the transformative spiritual wisdom of our tradition accessible to all who seek it.

The former director of the Teva Learning Center, Nili Simhai is a leader of the Jewish environmental education movement. She has trained and counseled hundreds of educators in the pedagogy of Jewish environmental education and has put environmental sensibilities and programs squarely in the middle of Jewish educational programming and outreach. In 2009 she was the recipient of the Covenant Award for excellence in Jewish education. In addition, she is proud of her role in the creation of Teva’s Shomrei Ḥayyot, Yitziah, and “Bringing It Back to Our Schools” programs, as well as her contribution to the development of several Teva curricula.Passionate about all of Creation, Nili’s background includes study and work in ecological concerns ranging from wildlife conservation, wetland remediation, and entomology (Ohio State University) to ornithology (International Birdwatching Center in Eilat, Smithsonian Institute) and natural history (Natural History Museum of Cleveland). She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts with her husband Yosh and her little boy, Tal.

Rabbi Howard A. Simon is a Reform movement rabbi in the United States. A graduate of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Prior to assuming leadership of Temple Emanu-El Congregation (Sarasota, Florida), he served congregations in Baltimore, Atlantic City, Cincinnati, and Knoxville. He is vice president of the Sarasota Ministerial Association, and writes a monthly column for The Jewish News (Sarasota/Manatee).

Dr. Alex Sinclair is the Director of Programs in Israel Education at JTS. He has published numerous articles on Israel education, as well as the book, Loving the Real Israel: An Educational Agenda for Liberal Zionism (2013) by Ben Yehuda Press.

Peri Sinclair is TALI’s Director of Professional ​Development. She received her doctorate in Midrash from the Jewish Theological Seminary and her MA in Jewish Education from JTS’s Davidson School of Education​. Peri is a graduate of the T​ALI​ School in Hod Hasharon and a proud alumn​a​ of NOAM (the Masorti Movement’s yo​uth​ movement). ​She​ ​has ​spent 15 summers ​in senior staff positions at Camp Ramah in the Berkshires. She is married to Dr. Alex Sinclair and together they are raising three inquisitive kids in Modi’in.

Rabbi Dr. Natan Slifkin is the founder and director of The Biblical Museum of Natural History in Beit Shemesh. He is the author of several works on the interface between Judaism and the natural sciences, including the Challenge Of Creation and The Torah Encyclopedia of the Animal Kingdom.

Rabbi Levi Slonim is the codirector for Chabad Downtown in Binghamton, New York and the director of development at the Rohr Chabad Center for Jewish Student Life at Binghamton University. He grew up at the Chabad house of his parents in Vestal, New York (just outside Binghamton) and since returning to Binghamton in 2008, he has initiated impactful programs like the Binghamton Jewish Greek Council Shabbat, the Listen Up mental health fellowship, and has led over 800 students on birthright trips to the State of Israel.

Robert B. Slosberg is a Conservative rabbi in the United States. A cum laude graduate of Columbia University, he earned a BA, MA, Rabbinic Ordination, and an honorary Doctor of Divinity from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He is the rabbi emeritus of Congregation Adath Jeshurun in Louisville, Kentucky, having served there since his rabbinic ordination in 1981. In 2012, Rabbi Slosberg was appointed the national chairman of the Masorti Rabbinic Cabinet. He also serves on the board of the National Council of Synagogues, a national Jewish Interfaith organization. From 2008 until 2012, Rabbi Slosberg was a driving force as chairman of Conservative Judaism's Outreach to Interfaith Couples Committee. Rabbi Slosberg is also a past Chairman of the Board of the Seminary's Albert A. List College in New York. Rabbi Slosberg is a fervent supporter of the State of Israel, having led over 25 missions to Israel, and has served on several national organizations benefiting the State of Israel. He is a founding member of the Louisville AIPAC (American-Israel Public Affairs Committee) Council.

Rabbi Moshe Smolkin is the senior rabbi at Adath Israel (Cincinnati, Ohio). He grew up in Texas and New Mexico and holds a B.A. from Brandeis and a M.A.T. in Mathematics Education from Tufts. He taught high school math in Boston, before attending the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at American Jewish University (AJU) in Los Angeles. While in rabbinical school, he interned as an interfaith chaplain, studied in Jerusalem, and served at Mishkon Tephilo in Venice, California. Rabbi Smolkin was ordained AJU in 2009, having twice received awards for his excellence in Talmud. He then served for 10 years as the rabbi at Ohavay Zion Synagogue in Lexington, Kentucky.

Eliran Sobel is a first-year rabbinical student at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah. He is a graduate of Rutgers University, majoring in Linguistics with a minor in Jewish Studies, and has spent time learning at the Hadar Institute and the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies. He has had internships with institutions such as the Jewish English Lexicon and Shamayim: Jewish Animal Advocacy. He is passionate about veganism, Yiddish, and has a casual interest in food science for the home kitchen. He is particularly interested in the variety of nusḥa'ot and studying Tana'ch and liturgy.

Naomi Socher-Lerner is a librarian and knowledge-seeker. She is a volunteer reader for the Public Domain LibriVox Recordings project and serves on the working group for Heymish Philly. She lives in Philadelphia with her spouse Beverly and enjoys slacklining, quilting, ancient philosophy, woodworking, making music, and reading.

Beverly Socher-Lerner is the Assistant Director of Congregational Learning at Temple Beth Sholom. She has a soft spot for chocolate chip cookies and beautiful mountains. When she is not at Temple Beth Sholom, she loves to pick vegetables at her CSA, enjoy and protect nature, craft, and especially bake. She is one of the organizers of Minyan Tikvah, an egalitarian, full liturgy community in Center City Philadelphia.

Ruth H Sohn is a rabbi, teacher, spiritual director, and writer. She co-directs the Yedidya Center for Jewish Spiritual Direction and the Morei Derekh Jewish Spiritual Direction Training Program, and she also serves as Director of the Aronoff Rabbinic Mentoring Program and Rabbi of the Lainer Beit Midrash at HUC-JIR in Los Angeles.

Josh Soref is a long-time participant of the National Havurah Committee, a Toronto-based DevOps Engineer, and a contributor to open-source projects (including the Open Siddur Project).

Mendel Spalter is the director of development for the Jewish Children's Museum.

Virginia Avniel Spatz lives and writes in DC, with a focus on Torah and justice, and works with We Act Radio and Charnice Milton Community Bookstore (CMCB) in Historic Anacostia. Her book, Rereading Exodus Along the Anacostia, supports the literacy programs of CMCB while highlighting the need for new perspectives on race, Jews, and power. She is also active in Tzedek Chicago, Hill Havurah (DC), SVARA, and a variety of other communities. Her journalism has appeared on We Act Radio and Capital Community News, and her fiction and nonfiction appears in variety of publications.

Daniel Sperber (Hebrew: דניאל שפרבר) is a British-born Israeli academic and rabbi. He is a professor of Talmud at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and an expert in classical philology, history of Jewish customs, Jewish art history, Jewish education and Talmudic studies. Sperber is the author of Minhagei Yisrael: Origins and History on the character and evolution of Jewish customs. He has written extensively on many issues regarding how Jewish law can and has evolved. This includes a call for a greater inclusion of women in certain ritual services, including ordination. In 1992, Sperber won the Israel Prize, for Jewish studies. (via wikipedia)

Rabbi Irving Spielman, ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. In the 1960s he was rabbi of Beth Hillel Synagogue in Bloomfield, Connecticut. In the 1980s and 1990s, he led the JCC of Fort Lee, New Jersey. Rabbi Spielman served on the boards of the Jewish National Fund of New Jersey, the Bergen County Board of Rabbis, and the Rabbinical Assembly of New Jersey, and as a as a member of the National Rabbinic Cabinet of Israel Bonds.

Rabbi Hannah Spiro is the rabbi of the Hill Ḥavurah and a June 2017 Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (Reconstructing Judaism) graduate.

Rabbi Ben-Tzion Spitz (born 1969, Queens, New York) was the Chief Rabbi of Uruguay. In May 2013 he was appointed as Chief Rabbi of Uruguay, a position he held until October 2016.

Rabbi Spitz serves Congregation B'nai Israel, Tustin, California. He served as a member of the Rabbinical Assembly Committee of Law and Standards (1994-2004; 2008-2016) and as a Global Justice Fellow for the American Jewish World Service (2016-2017). A graduate of The Jewish Theological Seminary and Boston University School of Law, Rabbi Spitz is the author of three books and many articles dealing with spirituality and Jewish law. He has taught the philosophy of Jewish law at the American Jewish University and taught at the Wilkinson College, Religious Studies Department at Chapman University.

Pesach Dahvid Stadlin is an individuated soul in a flesh colored spacesuit, clinging to a wet mutant life-pulsating mud heap, hurling through time and space, getting hip to what’s going on. When he is not directing spirits at Eden Village Camp, he is a rabbinical student at the Diaspora Yeshiva Toras Yisroel, just outside the walls of the Old City in Jerusalem.

The Georgia House of Representatives is the lower house of the Georgia General Assembly (the state legislature) of the U.S. state of Georgia.

 

Eli Steier is an avid fan of the often-libeled bird, the pigeon. This may have been the natural result of being born and raised in Queens. A graduate of SUNY Stony Brook, he has studied at Pardes in Israel, and is a former board member of the Wandering Jews of Astoria.

Rabbi Dr. Oren Z. Steinitz is the spiritual leader of Congregation Kol Ami in Elmira, NY. He was ordained in 2014 at the Mesifta Adas Wolkowisk Rabbinical Academy, and is a member of OHALAH Association of Rabbis for Jewish Renewal. The same year he completed his doctorate at the University of Calgary‘s Interdisciplinary Graduate Program (Religious Studies, Communications and Israel Studies), researching the attitude towards the “Other” in Jewish and Islamic legal websites. Rabbi Oren holds BA and MA degrees from the Ben Gurion University of the Negev (Israel). His fields of expertise include the history of Jewish-Muslim relations; modern Jewish fundamentalism; Jewish and Islamic Law; and the religious online world.Before assuming his current position, Rabbi Oren served for five years as the University of Calgary’s Jewish Chaplain, taught at Mount Royal University in Calgary, and worked for the Masorti Movement in Israel.

Rabbi Gil Steinlauf serves as rabbi at Congregation Kol Shalom in Rockville, Maryland and formerly served as senior rabbi at Adas Israel Congregation, Washington, DC. He is the co-creator of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism’s “Innovation Labs” for synagogue renewal. He is the first senior rabbi of a large, historic, conservative congregation to come out as openly gay, and has sought to create an atmosphere of constructive dialogue on the issues facing modern culture and Judaism. Along with Adas clergy and staff, Rabbi Steinlauf co-founded three nationally recognized projects now operating out of Adas Israel: YP@AI for Jewish Young Professionals, MakomDC for 21st century experiential learning, and the Jewish Mindfulness Center of Washington for meditation, yoga, and contemplative Jewish practices. Rabbi Steinlauf had previously been the rabbi of Temple Israel in New Jersey, is a summa cum laude graduate of Princeton University, studied at the Pardes Institute in Jerusalem, earned an MHL from the University of Judaism, and received rabbinic ordination and an MA at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Currently, Rabbi Steinlauf is on the boards of the Washington Chapter of the American Jewish Committee, A Wider Bridge, and ALEPH Alliance for Jewish Renewal. He also sits on the Human Rights Campaign’s Religion Council, and on the Chancellor’s Advisory Committee of JTS. He is an alumnus of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, a member of the Center for Jewish Learning and Leadership’s Rabbis Without Borders program, and is on the current GLEAN cohort of spiritual entrepreneurs.

Dr. Devora Steinmetz serves on the leadership team for special programs at Drisha Institute in the United States and Israel. She has taught Talmud and Rabbinics at Drisha, the Jewish Theological Seminary, Yeshivat Hadar, and Havruta: a Beit Midrash at Hebrew University. Dr. Steinmetz is the founder of Beit Rabban, a Jewish day school profiled in Daniel Pekarsky’s Vision at Work: The Theory and Practice of Beit Rabban. She is the author of scholarly articles on Talmud, Midrash, and Bible as well as of two books: From Father to Son: Kinship, Conflict, and Continuity in Genesis and Punishment and Freedom: The Rabbinic Construction of Criminal Law. Dr. Steinmetz consults for the Mandel Foundation and works at Gould Farm, a therapeutic community for individuals struggling with mental illness.

Rabba Kaya Stern-Kaufman is the founder of Rimon: Resource Center for Jewish Spirituality, where she served as Executive Director and Spiritual Leader from 2012–2016. She is dedicated to the development of meaningful Jewish community rooted in Jewish wisdom traditions and focused on the contemporary needs for Tikkun Olam—repairing the world. Ordained by the Academy for Jewish Religion, a non-denominational, pluralistic seminary in Yonkers, in 2011, she also holds a BA in Psychology and a Masters in Social Work from New York University. Rabba Kaya is a Fellow of Rabbis Without Borders and a graduate of the Clergy Leadership Program of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. Prior to work in the Jewish community, Rabba Kaya worked as a clinical social worker and as a professional Feng Shui Consultant. In 2015, Rabba Kaya was recognized by The Forward as one of America’s Most Inspiring Rabbis.

Ella Stiniguță is a freelance Romanian translator.

Ohad Stolarz was born in Tel Aviv in 1989. His family comes from Germany and Argentina. Stolarz has lived in Berlin since 2013. In 2014, Stolarz founded the Hebrew Choir Berlin (e.V.), a German-Israeli amateur choir, which he conducted until 2017 and to which he dedicated several compositions. Since 2016, Stolarz has been studying choral conducting at the Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler" Berlin with Prof. Jörg-Peter Weigle, and since 2018 with Prof. Justin Doyle.

Based in mid-Hudson Valley, New York, Kohenet Ilana Joy Streit is a working artist, peacemaker, and a weaver of blessings (through poem, prayer, and song).

David Stromberg is a writer, translator, and literary scholar based in Jerusalem. His nonfiction has appeared in The American Scholar, Literary Matters, and Speculative Nonfiction, and his fiction in The Woven Tale Press, Atticus Review, and the UK's Ambit. His most recent book is A Short Inquiry into the End of the World (2021) and Old Truths and New Clichés: Essays by Isaac Bashevis Singer from Princeton University Press (2022).

In June 2006 Alan Jay Sufrin released his first solo EP, Folky American Pop, and has since been making music and honing his craft as a singer/songwriter/producer. His latest project, a duo with acclaimed singer-songwriter Miriam Brosseau known as “Stereo Sinai,” is lending renewed relevance to ancient Jewish texts by taking original Hebrew, Yiddish, and Aramaic verses and mixing them with synthesized pop arrangements they call “Biblegum Pop.” Learn more about Stereo Sinai at stereosinai.com.

Born in 1970 and raised in Argentina, Rabbi Gustavo Surazski was ordained at the "Latin American Rabbinical Seminary" in Buenos Aires in 1998, where he taught halacha and rabbinic literature. Rabbi Gustavo earned a B.A. in Jewish Scripture and Philosophy from the University of Haifa and an M.A. in Jewish Studies from the Jewish Theological Seminary in Jerusalem. He is also a cantor and Torah scribe, having written Sifrei Torah for congregations in the United States, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Israel. In Argentina, he served as rabbi of the Beit Chai Community of the Natán Gesang Day School. He made aliyah to Ra'anana in 2002, where he served as rabbi of the local Masorti congregation, Kehillat Amitai. Since 2004, he has been serving as rabbi of Kehillat Netzach Israel in Ashkelon.

Michal Talya (מיכל טל-יה) is a musical artist, psychologist, and liturgist living in Jerusalem.

Moshe Tanenbaum, from Toronto, Canada, is the original front-man for Uncle Moishy and the Mitzvah Men (1975-present).

Organized by Noam Lerman, Der Tekhines Proyekt reclaims traditional tekhines written and prayed by women, trans, and gender-non-conforming people, and makes them accessible. It includes workshops, where people engage with original Yiddish tekhines liturgy with English translations, learn new melodies paired with small sections of tekhines, and discuss the Feminist practice of spontaneously praying in the vernacular. Multiple individuals locate interesting tekhines, partake in translation work, create new melodies, and collect contemporary heart-prayers in the vernacular, so that tekhines can be brought back into our prayer spaces.

Zachary Teutsch is Managing Partner of Values Added Financial, an investment management and financial planning consulting firm.

Founded 2002, T'ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, (formerly Rabbis for Human Rights - North America) is a multi-denominational rabbinical organization dedicated to giving voice to the tradition of human rights in Judaism.

Ira Tick is a Jewish educator.

The Jewish English Torah (JET) is a project to translate the TaNaKh. The project uses the World English Bible (WEB) as the base while making appropriate corrections where the WEB presents non-Jewish readings of scripture.

Rabbi Torczyner is the Rosh Beit Midrash of Yeshivat Or Chaim and Ulpanat Orot in Toronto. Since 1995, his website, WebShas, has provided a topic-driven index to the Talmud. Another website, HaMakor, offers bibliographies on a range of Torah topics. More than 500 recordings of Rabbi Torczyner’s shiurim delivered in Toronto are featured on yutorah.com. He holds rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Elchanan Theological Seminary. Rabbi Torczyner maintains a popular blog, The Rebbetzin’s Husband, and lives in Thornhill with his wife, Caren, and their four children.

Pablo A. Torijano, Ph.D. (2000), New York University, is Associate Professor in the Department of Hebrew and Aramaic Studies at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He is co-editor of 1–2 Kings in Septuaginta Vetus Testamentum Graecum. His research focuses on Septuagint and Second Temple Judaism. He is the author of Solomon the Esoteric King (Brill 2002) and the co-editor of The Text of the Hebrew Bible and Its Editions, Studies in Celebration of the Fifth Centennial of the Complutensian Polyglot (Brill 2016), and Textual Criticism and Dead Sea Scrolls Studies in Honour of Julio Trebolle Barrera: Florilegium Complutense Project.

Emanuel Tov (Hebrew: עמנואל טוב‎; born September 15, 1941, Amsterdam, Netherlands) is emeritus Professor in the Department of Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Ed Towbin grew up in Denver, CO in a conservative congregation. As an adult he learned of Reconstructionist Judaism, which was a comfortable place for his developing theological awakening. Ed has been writing "variants" to Reconstructionist liturgy for the past 40 years, emphasizing his understanding of principles of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan. His work stresses values such as considering the divine as a process not a human-type entity; the importance of Jewish peoplehood; recognizing the human authorship of Scripture, with consequent questioning of miracles, revelations, and commandments; and rejecting ideas such as Divine Kingship and the Chosenness of the Jewish people.

Isaac Treuherz is co-editor of Siddur Masorti.

Boaz Tsaban (born February 1973) is an Israeli mathematician on the faculty of Bar-Ilan University. His research interests include selection principles within set theory and nonabelian cryptology, within mathematical cryptology.

Benyamim (Benny) Tsedaka is one of the elders of his people. As an historian, he has published over 100 books and over 2000 articles in Hebrew and English on Israelite Samaritan life, collated by the Internal University Computer in Israel under ‘Samaritans’. Benyamim Tsedaka is Head of the Israelite Samaritan Information Centre. Benny is the author of the ‘Samaritans’ entries in Encyclopedia Judaica; Encyclopedia of Zionism (in English); The Hebrew Encyclopedia, Jerusalem; and Encyclopedia Britannica for Youth (in Hebrew). Benny’s Israelite Samaritan Version of the Torah was published in May 2013. For the first time ever, English translations of the Samaritan Pentateuch and the Masoretic (Jewish) text are laid out in parallel columns with important differences noted.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF; Hebrew: צְבָא הַהֲגָנָה לְיִשְׂרָאֵל Tsva ha-Haganah l'Yisrael, lit. 'The Army of Defense for Israel'), alternatively referred to by the Hebrew-language acronym Tsahal (צה״ל), is the national military of the State of Israel. It consists of three service branches: the Israeli Ground Forces, the Israeli Air Force, and the Israeli Navy. It is the sole military wing of the Israeli security apparatus, and has no civilian jurisdiction within Israel. The IDF is headed by the Chief of the General Staff, who is subordinate to the Israeli Defense Minister.

Rabbi Ethan Tucker is co-founder and rosh yeshiva at Mechon Hadar and chair in Jewish Law. Ethan was a faculty member at the Drisha Institute for Jewish Education, where he taught Talmud and Halakhah in the Scholars' Circle. Ethan was ordained by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and earned a PhD in Talmud and Rabbinics from the Jewish Theological Seminary and a B.A. from Harvard College. A Wexner Graduate Fellow, he was a co-founder of Kehilat Hadar and a winner of the first Grinspoon Foundation Social Entrepreneur Fellowship. He was named one of America’s Top 50 Rabbis by Newsweek in 2011 and 2012.

Chava Turniansky is a leading scholar of Old Yiddish. Born in Mexico, Turniansky attended the Yidishe Shul, took private Hebrew lessons, and joined the Socialist Zionist Youth Movement. In 1957 she emigrated to Israel, where she first studied education and went on to study Yiddish with some of the most prominent scholars of the time. Her publications shed light on the manifold aspects of Ashkenazi life, literature, and culture, including its internal bilingualism, the way literacy and knowledge are transmitted, how men and women are educated, book production and reception, and women readers and writers. Turniansky views not just as the vernacular of fourteenth to eighteenth century Jewish society but as a vehicle for understanding the literary, philological, historical and sociological mores of the period. (via her entry in the Jewish Women's Archive)

Founded in 2015, Tzedek Chicago is an intentional Jewish congregation based on core values of justice, equity and solidarity. The congregation's core values emphasize the Torah’s central narrative of liberation, the prophetic imperative to speak truth to power, and an expansive diasporic vision that views the entire world as a Jewish homeland with open borders for all.

Miriam Udel is Judith London Evans Director of the Tam Institute of Jewish Studies and associate professor of Yiddish language, literature, and culture at Emory University, where she studies the Jewish encounter with modernity. She holds an AB in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and a PhD in Comparative Literature, both from Harvard University. Udel was ordained in 2019 as part of the first cohort of the Executive Ordination Track at Yeshivat Maharat, a program designed to bring qualified mid-career women into the Orthodox rabbinate. In the Jewish community, she enjoys teaching about narrative midrash and medieval biblical interpretation as well as Yiddish culture. With grace and imagination, she stages meaningful textual encounters between classical and modern Jewish literary sources. She uses “darshanit” (interpreter) as her rabbinic title, both as a descriptor of her contribution and in recognition of such historical figures as Rivka bas Me’ir Tiktiner, the first woman known to have published a book in Yiddish, identified as harabanit vehadarshanit.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) based in Paris. Its declared purpose is to contribute to peace and security by promoting international collaboration through educational, scientific, and cultural reforms in order to increase universal respect for justice, the rule of law, and human rights along with fundamental freedom proclaimed in the United Nations Charter. It is the successor of the League of Nations' International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation.

Adrienne Varady is an artist, art historian, and editor. She was formerly the visual resources librarian for the University of Cincinnati's DAAP library.

Aharon Varady is the founding director of the Open Siddur Project. A community planner (M.C.P, DAAP/University of Cincinnati.) and Jewish educator (M.A.J.Ed., the William Davidson School of Education), his work in open-source Judaism has been written about in the Yiddish Forverts, the Atlantic Magazine, Tablet, and Haaretz. If you find any egregious mistakes in his work, please let him know. Shgiyot mi yavin; Ministarot naqeni שְׁגִיאוֹת מִי־יָבִין; מִנִּסְתָּרוֹת נַקֵּנִי "Who can know all one's flaws? From hidden errors, correct me" (Psalms 19:13). If you'd like to directly support his work, please consider donating via his Patreon account. (Varady also transcribes and translates prayers, besides serving as the primary shammes of the Open Siddur Project.)

Shaul Vardi is a freelance translator and editor living in Jerusalem and active in the Reform community Kol HaNeshama (KKH). Among other liturgical projects, Shaul devised the transliteration methods used in KKH’s bilingual Siddur and in the bilingual accompaniment to the new Israeli Reform Siddur Tefilat Ha-Adam. He also composed the first Hebrew-language “mi she-berakh” for LGBTQI+ Pride Shabbat.

Meena-Lifshe Viswanath is a native Yiddish speaker and a civil engineer. She lives in California with her husband and children, with whom she speaks Yiddish. She is on the executive board of Yugntruf Youth for Yiddish.

Rabbi Andy Vogel is the rabbi at Temple Sinai in Brookline, Massachusetts. He was ordained at HUC-JIR in New York in 1998.

Alan Wagman is an assistant public defender in Albuquerque.

Yaakov Wasilewicz, from Czestochowa, Poland, is a Jewish musician, composer, genealogical researcher, and Polish-English translator.

Rabbi Arthur Waskow is the director of The Shalom Center. In 2013, Rabbi Waskow received T’ruah’s first Lifetime Achievement Award as a “Human Rights Hero.” His chapter, “Jewish Environmental Ethics: Adam and Adamah,” appears in Oxford Handbook of Jewish Ethics and Morality (Dorff & Crane, eds.; Oxford Univ. Press, 2013). Rabbi Waskow is the author of 22 books including Godwrestling, Seasons of Our Joy (JPS, 2012), and Down-to-Earth Judaism: Food, Money, Sex, and the Rest of Life. With Sister Joan Chittister and Murshid Saadi Shakur Chisht he co-authored The Tent of Abraham: Stories of Hope and Peace for Jews, Christians, and Muslims, and with with Rabbi Phyllis Berman wrote Freedom Journeys: Exodus & Wilderness Across Millennia (Jewish Lts, 2011). He edited Torah of the Earth (two volumes, eco-Jewish thought from earliest Torah to our own generation). These pioneering books on eco-Judaism are available at discount from “Shouk Shalom,” The Shalom center's online bookstore.

Julia Watts Belser is Associate Professor of Jewish Studies in the Theology Department at Georgetown University. She is the author of Power, Ethics, and Ecology in Jewish Late Antiquity (Cambridge Univ. Press 2015) and Rabbinic Tales of Destruction: Gender, Sex, and Disability in the Ruins of Jerusalem (Oxford University Press 2018).

Rabbi Steven Weil is Senior Managing Director of the Orthodox Union.

Levi Weiman-Kelman is the founding rabbi of Congregation Kol Haneshama, a Reform community in Jerusalem devoted to prayer, study and social action. He is a founding member of Rabbis for Human Rights and teaches at the Hebrew Union College.

Josh Weinberg is, director of Reconstructionist Rabbinical College's Israel Program. In 2003, he made aliyah to Israel. He serves as a reserve officer in the spokesperson’s unit of the Israel Defense Force and is currently enrolled in the Israeli rabbinical program at Hebrew Union College. Weinberg has been an active educator and guide for the Reform movement in Israel, with experience in both the informal and formal education sectors in Israel. He has taught and lectured widely about Israel and Jewish identity throughout Israel, the United States and Europe. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in international relations, Hebrew literature and political science from the University of Wisconsin and received a Master of Arts from the Melton Center of Jewish Education at Hebrew University. He was born and raised in Chicago. Weinberg loves politics, the environment and the outdoors, Jewish texts, and everything having to do with Israel. He is married to Mara Sheftel Getz; they are the proud parents of Noa.

Ezra Weinberg is Jewish life and enrichment manager at the YM & YWHA of Washington Heights & Inwood, New York. Rabbi Ezra received his BA from Hampshire College in 1999 and his MA in Conflict Transformation from the School for International Training in 2003. He also spent seven years in Israel, adding a strong Israeli flavor to his brand of Jewish education. Ezra is a trained facilitator in having difficult conversations on the topic of Israel. Having received rabbinic ordination from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 2009, Ezra spent four years as a congregational Rabbi, including two years as the Marshall T. Meyer Rabbinic Fellow at Congregation B'nai Jeshurun in New York City. Since then he has pursued his passion for working with youth including two years as the Assistant Director at Eden Village Camp.

Stuart Weinblatt is an ordained rabbi and the President of the Rabbinic Cabinet of the Jewish Federations of North America. He is the senior rabbi of Congregation B’nai Tzedek in Potomac, Maryland. He and his wife founded the Conservative synagogue in 1988 with only a handful of families. The congregation’s membership is now over 650 families. Rabbi Weinblatt also served as Director of Israel Policy and Advocacy for the Rabbinical Assembly starting in 2009 and was tapped by the Jewish National Fund to head up and organize their "Rabbis for Israel" affinity group.

Rabbi Martin Weiner is the rabbi emeritus of Sherith Israel, San Francisco, California. He undertook his rabbinic studies at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, where he earned his ordination and a master of arts in Hebrew letters in 1964. Following his ordination, Rabbi Weiner was assistant, associate and co-rabbi at Temple Oheb Shalom of Baltimore, Maryland. While there, he served as chair of the Baltimore chapter of the American Jewish Committee, was on the state board of the ACLU and taught Jewish Religious Thought at Goucher College. Rabbi Weiner joined Congregation Sherith Israel as senior rabbi in 1972. He energized the congregation during his 31-year tenure at Sherith Israel, attracting many new members. Known throughout the community for his quest for social justice, particularly in the areas of civil rights, human rights and Soviet Jewry, Rabbi Weiner was a member of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission for many years. Rabbi Weiner served as President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), Reform Judaism's professional rabbinical association. Previously he had served as an officer and as a CCAR board member. He currently chairs the CCAR’s ethics process review committee and is a longstanding member of the Reform Pension Board. He also served on the editorial committee for the Reform movement’s new prayer book, Mishkan T’filah. In San Francisco, he has been on the boards of the Jewish Community Federation, the American Jewish Committee and Jewish Family and Children's Services. Rabbi Weiner has also served as president of the Pacific Association of Reform Rabbis and as chair of the San Francisco Interfaith Council. He has been honored by the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish Congress.

Dr. Susan Weingarten is an archaeologist and historian who was formerly in the research team of the Sir Isaac Wolfson Chair for Jewish Studies, Tel Aviv University, Israel. After publishing The Saint’s Saints: Hagiography and Geography in Jerome (2005), she decided to move from ascetic Christianity to Jewish food.

Rabbi Jay Weinstein is rabbi at Young Israel of East Brunswick, New Jersey having previously served as assistant rabbi at Congregation Shaare Tefilla in Dallas and program coordinator for the Community Kollel of Dallas. He received his ordination from Yeshiva University.

Rabbi Simkha Y. Weintraub, CSW, is the Rabbinic Director of the National Center for Jewish Healing and the New York Jewish Healing Center.

Rabbi Raysh Weiss PhD is the Rabbi of Congregation Beth El of Bucks County and is married to fellow rabbi and musician Jonah Rank, and they enjoy davening and dreaming with their two extraordinary kids.

Lauren Weiss is a lobbyist for an association of family planning health centers.

Avraham Haim Yosef (Avi) haCohen Weiss (Hebrew: אברהם חיים יוסף הכהן ווייס; born June 24, 1944) is an American Modern Orthodox ordained rabbi, author, teacher, lecturer, and activist. He is the Founding Rabbi and served as Senior Rabbi of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale (known as “the Bayit”) in New York. Since his retirement in 2015, he has served as the Rabbi-in-Residence. Rabbi Weiss is also the founding president of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, a rabbinical seminary for men that he refers to as "Open Orthodox", a term he coined to describe an offshoot of Modern Orthodoxy, and founder of Yeshivat Maharat for women; co-founder of the International Rabbinical Fellowship, an Open Orthodox rabbinical association founded as a liberal alternative to the Modern Orthodox Rabbinical Council of America, and founder of the grassroots organization, Coalition for Jewish Concerns, AMCHA. In 2007, Rabbi Weiss was named by Newsweek magazine as one of the fifty most influential rabbis in America, describing him as “Orthodox’s leading activist and leader of the Modern Orthodox community.” He is the author of two books, Women at Prayer: A Halakhic Analysis of Women’s Prayer Groups, and Principles of Spiritual Activism.

Rabbi Dr. Robert S. Widom is Senior Rabbi of Temple Emanuel of Great Neck, New York. He received his undergraduate degree from New York University in history and philosophy. He was ordained at the New York school of the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, where he received an earned doctorate for his work in explicating a little-known area of Polish-Jewish history. He was invited to join the faculty of the School of Education of the Hebrew Union College, and taught history and philosophy. He currently serves on the Town of North Hempstead’s Board of Ethics, a position he has held since April 15, 1975. Several years ago, Rabbi Widom organized an association of faith partners composed of Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Sikh, Hindu and Muslim groups.

Since July 2008, Rabbi Jeremy Wiederhorn has served as the spiritual leader of The Conservative Synagogue. He is also Vice President of the New York Board of Rabbis, a member of the Executive Council of the Rabbinical Assembly, sits on the Rabbinic Cabinet of the Masorti Foundation, serves on the Board of Directors of MERCAZ USA, and is a Regional Board Member of ADL and National Council Member of AIPAC. Since 2011, he has served as the President of the Interfaith Clergy Association of Westport and Weston. Prior to The Conservative Synagogue, Rabbi Wiederhorn served for eight years as the first full-time rabbi of Midbar Kodesh Temple in Henderson, Nevada where he helped grow the young congregation to 300 families, started a Hevra Kadisha, and helped create the Solomon Schechter Day School of Las Vegas. Born in Michigan and raised in Southern California, the rabbi earned a BA in Judaic Studies from the University of California, San Diego. He also received a Masters in Hebrew Letters from the University of Judaism and another MA with his rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in New York.

Rabbi Rallis Wiesenthal works to preserve Orthodox German Jewish customs. He received Semicha from Jews' College (The London School of Jewish Studies) in London, England in 1994. A graduate of Yeshivat Beis HaMidrash LaTorah (Hebrew Theological College), and the Oscar Z. Fasman Yeshiva High School in Skokie, Illinois. He lives in West Rogers Park with his wife and their four sons.

Wikisource is a collaborative transcription site and part of the family of user-generated content sites administered by the Wikimedia Foundation. The Open Siddur Project uses Wikisource for collaborative transcription by taking advantage of the Proofread Page MediaWiki extension installed as a feature for public use. For detailed attribution information for any text, please refer to the "View History" link on specific Wikisource pages.

Ilene Winn-Lederer is a Pittsburgh-based Jewish artist in the United States. Originally from Chicago, she attended the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. A member of the Pittsburgh Society of Illustrators, Winn-Lederer’s clients have included The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Hadassah, NY, Lilith Magazine, Children’s Television Workshop, Scholastic, Charlesbridge Publishers, Simon & Schuster and Cricket Magazine. Her drawings and paintings are included in public and private collections throughout the United States, Europe and Israel. These are published under her imprint, Imaginarius Editions. She is the author and illustrator of Between Heaven & Earth: An Illuminated Torah Commentary (Pomegranate, 2009). In 2014, Ilene published An Illumination Of Blessings, the result of a successfully funded Kickstarter project.is It is a collection of thirty-six illustrated blessings with detailed commentaries that are drawn from the Jewish tradition of Me’ah Berakhot (100 Blessings). The illustrations include calligraphy in Hebrew and English, an artist’s preface and introduction by renowned Judaic scholar Marc Michael Epstein. In 2015, Imaginarius Editions released Notes From London: Above & Below, a collection of annotated illustrations drawn from pocket journals maintained during her visits there between 2002-2009.

Jeffrey A. Wohlberg is the retired senior rabbi of Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, DC, and a past president of the Rabbinical Assembly of Conservative Jewish rabbis.

Aaron Wolf is a math and computer science teacher in Cleveland, Ohio.

The Jewish Vegetarian Society in Jerusalem runs Zangvil, the Ginger Vegetarian Community Center on 8 Balfour Street. The Society was founded in Jerusalem in 1991 by the late Philip L. Pick, as a counterpart to the Jewish Vegetarian Society in London. Ever since, it worked to promote animal welfare and plant based diets.

Rabbi Ellen S. Wolintz-Fields is executive director for the Women’s League for Conservative Judaism.

David Wolkin is a writer and an educator. He lives in Takoma Park, Maryland with his partner Keeli, their cats RoboCop and Phineas, and their dog Waffles.

David J. Wolpe (born 1958) is the Max Webb Senior Rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, California. He previously taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York, the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, Hunter College, and UCLA. Wolpe’s work has been profiled in the New York Times, and he is a columnist for Time.com, he regularly writes for many publications, including The LA Times, the Washington Post’s On Faith website, The Huffington Post, and the New York Jewish Week. He has been on television numerous times, including the Today Show, Face the Nation, ABC this Morning, and CBS This Morning. In addition, Wolpe has been featured in series on PBS, A&E, the History channel, and the Discovery channel. Wolpe is the author of eight books, including the national bestseller Making Loss Matter: Creating Meaning in Difficult Times and David: The Divided Heart, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award (2014).

Alexandra Wright is a British Liberal rabbi who was appointed as the first female senior rabbi in England in 2004, as Rabbi of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in St John's Wood, London. She is President of Liberal Judaism in the United Kingdom. Wright became the seventh woman to be ordained as a rabbi in the United Kingdom in 1986; she was ordained at Leo Baeck College, and has taught classical Hebrew there. She served as Associate Rabbi at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue from 1986 until 1989. She then served as Rabbi at Radlett and Bushey Reform Synagogue in Hertfordshire from 1989 until 2003.

Erica Schultz Yakovetz is a graphic designer and visual artist specializing in Jewish texts, as well as a vocalist and performer. She holds a BA in English from Brandeis University. After almost 25 years in Boston (where she led Friday night services for many years at Temple Beth Shalom of Cambridge) and NYC, she moved back to her native Northwest Indiana in April 2014. She now leads the Friday night service at Congregation Beth Israel in Munster, IN.

Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz (born 1981) is an Open Orthodox rabbi and author. In March 2012 and March 2013, Newsweek/The Daily Beast listed Yanklowitz as one of the 50 most influential rabbis in America and The Forward named Yanklowitz one of the 50 most influential Jews of 2016. Yanklowitz was ordained as a rabbi at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah and he received a second rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, the chief rabbi of Efrat, and a third rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo of Jerusalem. He earned a master's degree at Harvard University in Leadership and Psychology, and a second master's degree in Jewish Philosophy at Yeshiva University. Yanklowitz received his doctorate in moral development from Columbia University and has taught at UCLA Law School and Barnard College. Yanklowitz founded Uri L'Tzedek, an Orthodox social justice movement, and Shamayim, a spiritual activist center for animal protection.

Rabbi Hanna Yerushalmi is a Licensed Graduate Professional Counselor (LGPC) with the State of Maryland. She earned a Master’s Degree in Mental Health Counseling from Bowie State University, a CACREP certified program. She is a Nationally Certified Counselor through the National Board for Certified Counselors. Hanna has training and supervision working with clients recovering from domestic violence and sexual abuse, through her internship at the YWCA of Annapolis, as well as training working with clients struggling with addiction, through her practicum at Pathways, Anne Arundel Medical Center.

Tzemah Yoreh, PhD, Resident CLAL: The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. His purpose in life is to make Bible and Prayer meaningful and accessible to people with conventional and non conventional views. He posts new research and writings at his websites: biblecriticism.com, humanistprayer.com, and modernscriptures.com.

Adam Zagoria-Moffet is the rabbi of St Albans Masorti Synagogue. He was ordained from the Jewish Theological Seminary where he also received an MA in Jewish Thought. He grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, and has lived in Minnesota, New York, and Israel before moving to the UK. His interests are primarily in mysticism, ethics, and Sephardic Judaism and culture. He lives in St Albans with his family.

Rabbi David Zaslow (b. Brooklyn, New York, 1947) serves Ḥavurah Shir Ḥadash in Ashland, Oregon. He was ordained in 1995 by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi under the supervision and mentorship of Rabbi Aryeh Hirschfeld. In 2003 he completed his term as a Spiritual Advisor to ALEPH, the umbrella organization of the Jewish Renewal movement. Before his ordination he served as a rabbinic intern for the Jewish communities Crescent City, CA, Bend, OR, and Redding, CA. During his years as a poet-in-the-schools for the southern Oregon region, David Zaslow wrote and edited more than a dozen of books of poetry as well as two albums of children’s music for publishers like Good Apple; Harcourt Brace Javanovich; and Scott Foresman. In the late 1970s David, along with partner Steve Sacks, co-created what became the Peter Britt Jazz Festival by bringing jazz legends like Dave Brubeck, Count Basie, Dizzie Gillespie, Woodie Herman, and dozens of other jazz greats to southern Oregon for the first time. Along with poet Lawson Inada, in 1988 he was awarded an American Book Award for educational materials for a project he co-produced featuring Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows to music composed by Patti McCoy.

Netanel Zellis-Paley is a Ph.D. student in School Psychology at Temple University.

Yitzchok Zilberstein (Hebrew: יצחק זילברשטיין, also spelled Silberstein) (born 1934) is a prominent Orthodox rabbi, posek (Jewish legal authority) and expert in medical ethics. He is the av beis din of the Ramat Elchanan neighborhood of Bnei Brak, the Rosh Kollel of Kollel Bais David in Ḥolon, and the Rav of Mayanei Hayeshua Medical Center in Bnei Brak. His opinion is frequently sought and quoted on all matters of halakhah for the Israeli Lithuanian yeshiva community.

Rabbi Dr. Israel Zoberman is the Founding Rabbi of Congregation Beth Chaverim in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Born in 1945 in Chu, Kazakhstan (USSR) to Polish Holocaust survivors who had met in Siberia, Rabbi Zoberman spent his early childhood in Poland, Austria and from 1947 to 1949 at Germany’s Wetzlar Displaced Persons Camp, American Zone. He grew up in Haifa, Israel and served in the IDF in the 1960s before emigrating to the United States in 1966. Rabbi Zoberman is the only rabbi to earn a doctorate in Pastoral Care and Counseling from Chicago’s McCormick Theological Seminary, affiliated with the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. A resident of Virginia since 1981, he served one year as Associate Rabbi at Ohef Sholom Temple in Norfolk before founding Congregation Beth Chaverim, the first Reform synagogue in Virginia Beach. In 1999, his alma mater, Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion, awarded him the honorary Doctor of Divinity Degree.

Gary Phillip Zola is the Executive Director of The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives (AJA) and the Edward M. Ackerman Family Distinguished Professor of the American Jewish Experience & Reform Jewish History at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in Cincinnati. Since 1998, he has served as the second Executive Director of The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives (AJA), succeeding his teacher and mentor, Jacob Rader Marcus (1896–1995). He is also editor of The Marcus Center’s award-winning semi-annual publication, The American Jewish Archives Journal. Zola served as the organizer and chair of the congressionally-recognized Commission for Commemorating 350 Years of American Jewish History, a consortium of leading research institutions established to promote the study of American Jewish history during the 350th anniversary Jewish life in America (2004–2005). In 2006, Zola became the first American Jewish historian to receive appointment to the Academic Advisory Council of the congressionally-recognized Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. In addition to these national activities, Zola has been actively involved in community relations in Cincinnati, Ohio. In May 2009, the Cincinnati Human Relations Commission conferred the Bishop Herbert Thompson, Jr. Outstanding Humanitarian Award on Zola in recognition of his service to the people of the greater Cincinnati metropolitan area. The Jewish Federation of Cincinnati recognized Zola’s service to Cincinnati’s Jewish community in 2004 by awarding him its Distinguished Leadership Award. In 2011, President Barack Obama appointed Zola to serve as a member of the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad. Although HUC-JIR presidents have received such distinctions over the years, Zola is the first regular member of the College-Institute’s faculty to serve on a standing commission of the United States Government in the history of the school.

Shoshana Michael Zucker was first fascinated by the boundaries and history of Jewish liturgy as a teenager in NFTY in the early 1970s, the waning days of the Union Prayer Book. Since then, she has moved to Israel, raised a family and launched them into adulthood, while praying from varied siddurim with countless notes in the margin and extra notes stuck between the pages. A translator and editor by profession, she would rather study and teach Torah.

Shlomo Zuckier, a founder of the Lehrhaus, is the Flegg Postdoctoral Fellow in Jewish Studies at McGill University. He recently completed a PhD in Religious Studies at Yale University as well as studies in Yeshiva University's Kollel Elyon. Shlomo was formerly Director of the Orthodox Union’s Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus at Yale University. An alumnus of Yeshivat Har Etzion and Yeshiva University (BA, MA, Semikhah), he has lectured widely across North America, and is excited to share Torah and Jewish scholarship on a broad range of issues. He has taught at Yale Divinity School, Yeshiva University, the Drisha Institute, Bnot Sinai, and Tikvah programs, and has held the Wexner and Tikvah Fellowships. Shlomo serves on the Editorial Committee of Tradition, is co-editor of Torah and Western Thought: Intellectual Portraits of Orthodoxy and Modernity, and is editing the forthcoming Contemporary Uses and Forms of Ḥasidut. (via the Lehrhaus)