Ḥanan Schlesinger

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.

Thabet Abu Rass (translation)

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 .

Dani Kranz (translation)

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.

Carina Branković (translation)

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.