Rabbi B. Elka Abrahamson

Rabbi B. Elka Abrahamson is President of The Wexner Foundation. She oversees the Foundation’s full range of activities and, in partnership with Foundation chairmen Abigail and Leslie Wexner, imagines how the Foundation might further strengthen and education Jewish professional and volunteer leaders in North America and public service leaders in the State of Israel. She was ordained at HUC-JIR, New York, in 1985. She began her career as associate rabbi at Peninsula Temple Beth El, San Mateo, CA. and then, with her husband, Rabbi Martin (Misha) Zinkow, she served as co-senior rabbi at Mount Zion Temple, in St. Paul, MN. Rabbi Abrahamson has been published in magazines, books, and journals including Moment, Shma and the CCAR Journal. Rabbi Abrahamson received the Bernard Reisman Award as an outstanding member of the professional Jewish community. She serves on the Faculty of the URJ as a resource and speaker on leadership. She was twice named one of the 50 most influential rabbis in North America and is a popular teacher and public speaker.

Professor Sharon Anisfeld

Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld became President of Hebrew College in July 2018. Rabbi Anisfeld graduated from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 1990, and subsequently spent 15 years working in pluralistic settings as a Hillel rabbi at Tufts, Yale and Harvard universities. She has been a regular summer faculty member for the Bronfman Youth Fellowships in Israel since 1993 and is co-editor of two volumes of women’s writings on Passover, “The Women’s Seder Sourcebook: Rituals and Readings for Use at the Passover Seder” (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2002) and “The Women’s Passover Companion: Women’s Reflections on the Festival of Freedom” (Jewish Lights Publishing, 2002).

Rabbi Professor Alan Brill

Rabbi Alan Brill is the Cooperman/Ross Endowed Chair for Jewish-Christian Studies at Seton Hall University, where he teaches Jewish studies in the graduate program. Brill is the author of Thinking God: The Mysticism of Rabbi Zadok of Lublin (2002), Judaism and Other Religions: Models Of Understanding (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and Judaism and World Religions (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Dr. Brill received his BA, MA, and Rabbinical Ordination from Yeshiva University and his PhD from Fordham University. He was a Fulbright Senior Scholar awardee to research and teach at Banares Hindu University in Varanasi, India. Brill just completed a book tentatively entitled “Rabbi on The Ganges: A Jewish Hindu Encounter.” Brill is active in the Jewish interfaith encounter with Catholics, Muslims, and Hindus.

Rabbi Sharon Brous

Rabbi Sharon Brous is the Founding Rabbi of IKAR in Los Angeles. Brous was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary in 2001 and received a Master’s Degree in Human Rights from Columbia University, where she also received her Bachelor’s Degree. After ordination, she served as a Rabbinic Fellow at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in NYC. In 2013, Brous was recognized as the most influential Rabbi in the United States by Newsweek and the Daily Beast, and as one of the Forward’s 50 most influential American Jews.

Rabbi Dr. Ariel Burger

Rabbi Dr. Ariel Burger is a writer, artist, teacher, and rabbi whose work combines spirituality, creativity, and strategies for social change. A lifelong student of Elie Wiesel, he spent years studying the great wisdom traditions, and now applies those teachings to urgent contemporary questions. When Ariel’s not learning or teaching, he is creating music, art, and poetry. He lives outside of Boston with his family.

Dr. Beth Cousens

Beth Cousens is a consultant to Jewish educational organizations, working in areas of strategic research and evaluation. Her clients have included American Jewish World Service, The Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties, Kevah, Repair the World, and the Shalom Hartman Institute – North America. Recently, as the Associate Vice President of Hillel’s Joseph Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Experience, Beth led Hillel’s Jewish educational strategy. Beth holds a PhD in the sociology of Jewish education from Brandeis University; she also holds an MA with Honors in Judaic Studies from Baltimore Hebrew University and an MSW from the University of Maryland. A specialist in adult Jewish education, emerging adulthood, and the Millennial generation, her dissertation research is entitled, “Shifting Social Networks: Studying the Jewish Growth of Adults in Their Twenties and Thirties.” She lives in San Francisco with her husband.

Dr. Marc Dollinger

Dr. Marc Dollinger holds the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies and Social Responsibility at San Francisco State University. He has served as research fellow at Princeton University’s Center for the Study of Religion as well as the Andrew W. Mellon Post-doctoral Fellow and Lecturer in the Humanities at Bryn Mawr College, where he coordinated the program in Jewish Studies. Professor Dollinger is author of four scholarly books in American Jewish history, most recently Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing The Alliance in the 1960s. He has published entries in the Encyclopedia Judaica, the Encyclopedia of Antisemitism, and the Encyclopedia of African American Education. His next project traces his own experience fighting campus anti-Semitism at both right-wing and left-wing universities. He sits on the California advisory committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights, was named Volunteer of the Year by the SF Jewish Community Federation, and was awarded the San Francisco JCRC’s Courageous Leader award.

Dr. Robert Eisen

Robert Eisen is Professor of Religion and Judaic Studies and Chair of the Department of Religion at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. The focus of his most recent research is approaches to peace and violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. His other areas of interest include comparative religion, Jewish philosophy, and Jewish biblical interpretation. Eisen is author of four books that reflect his varied interests: Gersonides on Providence, Covenant, and the Chosen People (State University of New York Press, 1995); The Book of Job in Medieval Jewish Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2004); The Peace and Violence of Judaism: From the Bible to Modern Zionism (Oxford University Press, 2011); and Religious Zionism, Jewish Law, and the Morality of War (Oxford University Press, 2017). He also co-edited Philosophers and the Jewish Bible (University of Maryland Press, 2008) with Charles Manekin. Eisen is currently working on a book entitled, Jews—A Success Story: How a Minority Survived Centuries of Persecution and Thrived in the Modern West.

Rabbi Dr. David Ellenson z’l

Internationally recognized for his publications and research in the areas of Jewish religious thought, ethics, and modern Jewish history, Rabbi Ellenson’s twelve years as President of the seminary of the Reform Movement (2001-2013) were distinguished by his devotion to sustaining HUC-JIR’s academic excellence. Rabbi Ellenson received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1981 and was ordained by HUC-JIR in 1977. He also holds an M.Phil. degree from Columbia University as well as the M.A. degree from HUC-JIR and the University of Virginia.  He received his B.A. degree from the College of William and Mary in Virginia in 1969.   A member of HUC-JIR’s faculty since 1979, he also held the post of Director of the Jerome H. Louchheim School of Judaic Studies at HUC-JIR’s Jack H. Skirball Campus in Los Angeles, which provides the undergraduate Judaic Studies program for USC.

Rabba Yaffa Epstein

Rabba Yaffa Epstein serves as the Director of Education, North America for the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies. She received Rabbinic Ordination from Yeshivat Maharat and holds a Law Degree from Bar-Ilan University. She has studied at the Pardes Kollel, the Advanced Talmud Institute at Matan and the Talmud Department of Hebrew University. Yaffa has been a teacher of Talmud, Jewish law, and Liturgy at Pardes for over a decade, and has served as the Director of the Beit Midrash at the Dorot Fellowship in Israel. She has taught Talmud and Jewish Law at Yeshivat Maharat, The Drisha Institute, The Wexner Heritage New Members Institute, Kayam Farm Kollel and Young Judaea. Yaffa has lectured at Limmud Events around the world, has written curriculum for the Global Day of Jewish Learning and has created innovative educational programming for Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life.

Rabbi Ed Feinstein

Rabbi Ed Feinstein is senior rabbi of Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, California. He serves on the faculty of the Ziegler Rabbinical School of the American Jewish University, the Wexner Heritage Program, the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and lectures widely across the United States.

He is the author of several books, including: Tough Questions Jews Ask – A Young Adult’s Guide to Building a Jewish Life, (Jewish Lights, 2003), was chosen for the American Library Association’s Top Ten Books on Religion for Young Readers and a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award.Jews and Judaism in the Twenty-First Century: Human Responsibility, the Presence of God and the Future of the Covenant (Jewish Lights, 2007) was also a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, Capturing the Moon (Behrman House, 2008) retells the best of classic and modern Jewish folktales. Most recently, Chutzpah Imperative! – Empowering Today’s Jews for a Life that Matters (Jewish Lights, 2014), offers a new way to “do Judaism,” Rabbi urges us to recover this message of Jewish self empowerment, or chutzpah, to reshape the world.

Rabbi Dr. Tirza Firestone

Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, PhD, is a Jungian psychologist, author, and the founding rabbi of Congregation Nevei Kodesh in Boulder, Colorado, a Jewish Renewal community dedicated to a passionate renewal of Judaism in the 21st century. Ordained by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi in 1992, Rabbi Firestone became a leader in the Jewish Renewal Movement and lectures and teaches widely on the confluence of Kabbalah and psychology and the reintegration of feminine wisdom tradition within Judaism.
Rabbi Firestone earned her doctorate in depth psychology in 2015 with a focus on the healing of intergenerational Jewish trauma. She is the author of With Roots in Heaven, a spiritual memoir; The Receiving: Reclaiming Women’s Wisdom, about the feminine Kabbalah; and a best selling audio set, Women’s Kabbalah. Her newest book, Wounds Into Wisdom: Healing Intergenerational Jewish Trauma, will be released in the spring of 2019. Rabbi Firestone and her husband David live outside of Boulder, Colorado. Together they have three grown children.

Professor Michael Fishbane

Professor Michael Fishbane is the Nathan Cummings Distinguished Service Professor of Jewish Studies. He was trained in Semitic languages, biblical studies, and Judaica. His writings span from the ancient Near East and biblical studies to rabbinics, the history of Jewish interpretation, Jewish mysticism, and modern Jewish thought. Among his many books are Text and Texture; Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel; Garments of Torah; The Kiss of God; and The Exegetical Imagination: On Jewish Thought and Theology. Both Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel and The Kiss of God won The National Jewish Book Award in scholarship. His commentary on the prophetic lectionary (Haftarot) in Judaism was published in 2002 (Jewish Publication Society Bible Commentary), and his book Biblical Myth and Rabbinic Mythmaking was published in 2003 (Oxford University Press). His latest work, Sacred Attunement: A Jewish Theology, was published in fall 2008 by the University of Chicago Press. He has recently published a multileveled comprehensive commentary presenting the full range of Jewish interpretations on the Song of Songs (Jewish Publication Society, 2015).

Sue Fishkoff

Sue Fishkoff is the editor of J., the Jewish news weekly of Northern California. Most recently she was a national correspondent for the JTA Jewish news service, focusing on Jewish identity. From 1991-1997, Sue lived in Israel where she was a staff writer for the Jerusalem Post.

Sue received her BA in history from Cornell University and her MA in Soviet politics from Columbia University. Her first book, The Rebbe’s Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch, was published in 2003 by Schocken Books. Her second book, Kosher Nation: Why More and More of America’s Food Answers to a Higher Authority, was published in October 2010. She lives in Oakland, CA.

Professor Samuel Fleischacker

Samuel Fleischacker is a Professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago. He studied at Yale University, receiving his Ph.D. in 1989. He works in moral and political philosophy, the history of moral and philosophy,and the philosophy of religion. Among the issues that have particularly interested him are the moral status of culture, the nature and history of liberalism, the relationship between moral philosophy and social science, and the relationship between moral and religious values. His publications include The Ethics of Culture (Cornell, 1994), On Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations: A Philosophical Companion (Princeton, 2003), A Short History of Distributive Justice (Harvard, 2004), Divine Teaching and the Way of the World (Oxford, 2011), Kant’s Questions: What Is Enlightenment? (Routledge, 2012), and The Good and the Good Book (Oxford, 2015). Professor Fleischacker has been a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, the University Center for Human Values at Princeton, and the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities at Edinburgh University. He taught previously at Williams College.

Dr. Michelle Friedman

Dr. Michelle Friedman is the Founder and Chair of the Department of Pastoral Counseling at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (YCT). She received an MD from the NYU School of Medicine and has completed advanced training at the Columbia University Psychoanalytic Center for Training and Research. Dr. Friedman is a highly respected psychiatrist who focuses on the Jewish community and has a special interest in the rabbinate and pastoral counseling. In addition to her private practice and her role at YCT, Dr. Friedman is an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York.

Rabbi Dr. Mel Gottlieb

Rabbi Mel Gottlieb, Ph.D is the President of the Academy for Jewish Religion, California. Ordained at Yeshiva University, he holds a doctorate in Mythology/Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute where he has taught Myth, Literature and Religious Studies; Jung and Freud, and Kabbalah. He has also been on the faculty of Yeshiva University, Columbia University, and USC School of Social Work. His essays have appeared in national journals such as Psychological Perspectives, Ideas and Ideals, and Shma: the books Illuminating Letters and King David’s Journey into Wholeness and publications such as the Huffington Post. A dynamic and engaging speaker, he is a frequent lecturer at the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles as well as synagogues of all denominations throughout Southern California. Rabbi Gottlieb is the former Director of Hillel at MIT, and Princeton, and the Co-Founder of Claremont Lincoln University. He has served as a congregational Rabbi in Los Angeles at The Westwood Village Synagogue and Kehillat Ma’arav. He was appointed by the Mayor of Santa Monica to the Homeless Task Force of Santa Monica and helped to create low cost housing and training for those in need of employment; Rabbi Gottlieb has also been the recipient of a Ford Foundation Grant for community organization work, and is a member of the Jewish-Muslim Forum in Los Angeles. He is married to Dr. Annette Gottlieb and they have four children.

Rabbi Dr. Irving “Yitz” Greenberg

Rabbi Dr. Irving “Yitz” Greenberg is the most influential American Jewish thinker of the past half century. As counsel to the leaders of American Jewry for decades, Rabbi Greenberg has helped set the agenda of the American Jewish community. In 1974, Rabbi Greenberg founded CLAL – The National Center for Leadership and Learning, a pioneering pluralistic program that has trained and educated a generation of lay-leaders and rabbis. In 1979, Rabbi Greenberg was appointed the Director of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust which led to the establishment of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., of which he was the chairman from 2000-2002. From 1997-2007, Rabbi Greenberg served as the President of Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation. Under Rabbi Greenberg’s leadership, the foundation developed Birthright Israel, the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education (PEJE), Makor, and the Jewish Early Childhood Education Initiative (JECEI). Rabbi Greenberg is the author of The Jewish Way: Living the Holidays, and numerous other books and articles, and is currently completing work on a new book to be published in 2012.

Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman

Donniel is the founder of some of the most extensive education, training and enrichment programs for scholars, educators, rabbis, and religious and lay leaders in Israel and North America.

He is the author of The Boundaries of Judaism, co-editor of Judaism and the Challenges of Modern Life, co-author of Spheres of Jewish Identity, and lead author of Speaking iEngage: Creating a New Narrative Regarding the Significance of Israel for Jewish Life. In addition, he is a prominent essayist, blogger, and lecturer on issues of Israeli politics, policy, Judaism, and the Jewish community.

His new book, Putting God Second: How to Save Religion from Itself, is scheduled for publication by Beacon Press in February 2016. He is currently working on his next book, which is entitled, Who Are The Jews: Healing A Divided People.

He is married to Adina, has three children and two grandchildren.

Professor Tova Hartman

Professor Tova Hartman is a scholar and social entrepreneur who is currently the Dean of Humanities at the Kiryat Ono Academic College.

She was formerly Professor of Gender Studies and Education at Bar Ilan University, specializing in gender and religion, and gender and psychology.

She is the author of a book on Jewish and Catholic mothers, titled Appropriately Subversive, as well as a book on the crossroads of Jewish Tradition and modern feminism, titled Feminism Encounters Traditional Judaism, which won the National Jewish Book Award for Women’s Studies in 2007.

Hartman most recently authored Are You Not a Man Of God? Devotion, Betrayal and Social Criticism in Jewish Tradition.

She is a founder of Kehillat Shira Hadasha, a congregation organized to increase women’s participation and leadership within traditional Jewish prayer and halakha.

Professor Christine Hayes

Christine Hayes is Robert F. and Patricia R. Weis Professor of Religious Studies in Classical Judaica. Before joining the Yale faculty in 1996, she was Assistant Professor of Hebrew Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University for three years. Her published works include several books and many articles in Vetus Testamentum, The Journal for the Study of Judaism, The Harvard Theological Review, and various scholarly anthologies.

Hayes’s most recent book, What’s Divine about Divine Law? Early Perspectives, received the 2015 National Jewish Book Award in Scholarship, a 2016 PROSE award for best book in Theology and Religious Studies from the American Publishers Association, and the 2016 Jordan Schnitzer Award from the Association of Jewish Studies.  Her other scholarly monographs are Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds (recipient of the 1997 Salo Baron prize for a first book in Jewish thought and literature) and Gentile Impurities and Jewish Identities: Intermarriage and Conversion from the Bible to the Talmud (a 2003 National Jewish Book Award finalist). She has authored two introductory volumes (The Emergence of Judaism [2010] and Introduction to the Bible [2012]). Edited works include Jewish Law and its Interactions with other Legal Systems (2014) and a Cambridge Companion to Judaism and Law (2017) as well as forthcoming volumes on rabbinic culture and history.

Hayes is active in professional and academic organizations, serving for many years as an editor of the Encyclopedia for the Bible and its Reception (EBR) and for 4 years as co-editor of the Association for Jewish Studies Review. She is the current Vice President for Program for the Association of Jewish Studies.

Professor Samuel Heilman

Samuel Heilman holds the Harold Proshansky Chair in Jewish Studies at the Graduate Center and is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Queens College of the City University of New York. In 2007-2008, he was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Jerusalem. He was selected as a Fulbright Senior Specialist and sent to the People’s Republic of China where he lectured at Nanjing, Henan, and Shanghai Universities. More recently he completed another Fulbright at the Universities of Wroclaw, Warsaw and Jagellonian University in Krakow Poland. He has also been Scheinbrun Visiting Professor of Sociology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, visiting professor of social anthropology at Tel Aviv University, and a Fulbright visiting professor at the Universities of New South Wales and Melbourne in Australia.

He is the author of numerous articles and reviews as well as thirteen books: Synagogue Life, The People of the Book, The Gate Behind the Wall, A Walker in Jerusalem, Cosmopolitans and Parochials: Modern Orthodox Jews in America(co-authored with Steven M. Cohen) Defenders of the Faith: Inside Ultra-Orthodox Jewry, Portrait of American Jewry: The Last Half of the 20th Century, When a Jew Dies: The Ethnography of a Bereaved Son and Sliding to the Right: The Contest for the Future of American Jewish Orthodoxy and (with Menachem Friedman) The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson . Most recently he has written Who Will Lead us: The Story of Five Hasidic Dynasties in America and is co-author of Hasidism: A New History. He is also editor of Death, Bereavement, and Mourning.

Professor Susannah Heschel

Susannah Heschel is the Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College. Her scholarship focuses on Jewish-Christian relations in Germany during the 19th and 20th centuries, the history of biblical scholarship, and the history of anti-Semitism. Her numerous publications include Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus (University of Chicago Press), which won a National Jewish Book Award, and The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany (Princeton University Press). She has also taught at Southern Methodist University and Case Western Reserve University.

Dr. Dara Horn

Dara Horn is the award-winning author of six books, including the novels In the Image (Norton 2002), The World to Come (Norton 2006), All Other Nights (Norton 2009), A Guide for the Perplexed (Norton 2013), and Eternal Life (Norton 2018), and the essay collection People Love Dead Jews (Norton 2021). One of Granta magazine’s Best Young American Novelists, she is the recipient of two National Jewish Book Awards, the Edward Lewis Wallant Award, the Harold U. Ribalow Award, and the Reform Judaism Fiction Prize, and she was a finalist for the JW Wingate Prize, the Simpson Family Literary Prize, and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Her books have been selected as New York Times Notable Books, Booklist’s Best 25 Books of the Decade, and San Francisco Chronicle’s Best Books of the Year, and have been translated into eleven languages. Her nonfiction work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Smithsonian, and The Jewish Review of Books, among many other publications, and she is a regular columnist for Tablet. Horn received her doctorate in Yiddish and Hebrew literature from Harvard University. She has taught courses in these subjects at Sarah Lawrence College and Yeshiva University, and has held the Gerald Weinstock Visiting Professorship in Jewish Studies at Harvard. She has lectured for audiences in hundreds of venues throughout North America, Israel and Australia. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and four children.

Rabbi David Jaffe

David Jaffe is a writer, rabbi and spiritual seeker. His first book, Changing the World from the Inside Out (Trumpeter, 2016), explores how to walk a holy path that integrates deep spiritual wisdom with the daily work of peacemaking and social change. David’s social consciousness was forged by the busing era and legal desegregation of late ’60s and early ’70s in New York as well as the growing openness about the Holocaust in the Jewish community. He has spent his entire adult life pursuing Jewish wisdom and working for reconciliation and social justice. This journey has taken him from his home in New York to the homeless shelters of San Francisco’s Tenderloin, to traditional Yeshiva in Jerusalem, to refugee camps of Central Africa and faith-rooted community organizing in Boston. During this time David served as the Director of Social Justice Programs at the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, as a founding board member of Avodah: The Jewish Service Corps and as the Spiritual Advisor at Gann Academy in Waltham, MA. David is the Founder and Principal of the Kirva Institute, where he teaches applied Jewish wisdom including Mussar and Tikkun Middot.

Rabbi Irwin Kula

Rabbi Irwin Kula is a disruptive spiritual innovator and rogue thinker. A 7th generation rabbi he is Co-President of Clal–The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership a do-tank committed to making Jewish a Public Good. A thought leader on the intersection of innovation, religion, and human flourishing, Irwin has worked with leaders from the Dalai Lama to Queen Noor and with organizations, foundations, and businesses in the United States and around the world to inspire people to live with greater passion, purpose, creativity and compassion.

Named one of the leaders shaping the American spiritual landscape, he received the 2008 Walter Cronkite Faith and Freedom Award for his work “toward equality, liberty and a truly inter–religious community” and has been listed in Newsweek for many years as one of America’s “most influential rabbis.” He is the Co-founder and Executive Editor of The Wisdom Daily.

A popular commentator in both new and traditional media, Irwin is the author of the award-winning book, Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life (2006), creator of the acclaimed film, Time for a New God (2004), and the Public TV series Simple Wisdom (2003), and is co-founder with Craig Hatkoff and Clay Christensen of the Disruptor Foundation.

Rabbi Arthur Kurzweil

Rabbi Kurzweil is an author, educator, editor, publisher, and illusionist. Kurzweil’s book From Generation to Generation: How to Trace Your Jewish Genealogy and Family History is considered to be a definitive introductory guide on the topic. Rabbi Kurzweil has also authored two books in the “For Dummies” series: Kabbalah for Dummies and The Torah for Dummies. Some of his other books include: On the Road with Rabbi Steinsaltz, The Encyclopedia of Jewish Genealogy and My Generations: A Course in Jewish Family History, which is commonly used as a textbook at synagogue schools across the country. During his 17-year tenure at Jason Aronson Publishers, he commissioned and published over 650 works of Jewish interest. Kurzweil has also been editor-in-chief of the Jewish Book Club,  president of the Jewish Book Council, and editorial consultant for Jossey-Bass.

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner

Rabbi Lawrence Kushner is the Emanu-El Scholar, in-residence at the Congregation Emanu-El of San Francisco, where he devotes his full energies to teaching and writing. He also serves as Visiting Professor of Jewish Spirituality at the Graduate Theological University in Berkeley. Prior to this, he was Rabbi-in-Residence at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City where he taught spirituality and mysticism and mentored rabbinic students. He presently continues as an adjunct member of the faculty. Before that, he served for 28 years as the rabbi of Congregation Beth El in Sudbury, Massachusetts. Kushner is widely regarded as one of the most creative religious writers in America and is highly sought after as a lecturer and teacher. Through his lectures, articles and 15 books (translated into six languages), he has helped shape the present agenda for per-sonal and institutional spiritual renewal.

Rabbi Noa Kushner

Rabbi Noa Kushner founded The Kitchen in 2011, an independent religious community in San Francisco. After graduating from Brown University, Kushner was ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1998. She served as a Hillel rabbi at both Sarah Lawrence College and Stanford University before launching The Kitchen. Noa is married to Michael Lezak, Rabbi for Social Justice at GLIDE. Together, they have three daughters.

Rabbi Danny Landes

Rabbi Danny Landes was a founding faculty member of The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles (Director of Education) and of Yeshiva of Los Angeles (The Van Lennop Chair of Social Ethics), as well as Adjunct Associate Professor of Law at Loyola Law School. He was Rabbi of the Upstairs Minyan which he merged with the renewed Congregation Bnai David Judea – a center for spirituality, intellectual ferment and social action. He has taught for the Wexner Foundation for over 20 years.

Rabbi Landes came to Pardes in Jerusalem in 1995 as Director and has been active in the creation of advanced Talmud classes, Bekiut Talmud, the Fellows, PEP, the Kollel, the Executive Seminar Programs, the annual Blaustein and Brettler Scholar Series, Pardes USA and strengthening of the Pardes Beit Midrash. He is an exponent of Jewish Unity and also was the first Rabbi to be invited by Indonesia to speak publicly (at the Forum of Religions). He and his wife Sheryl Robbin, a social worker and author, write on Biblical and ethical issues.

Rabbi Aaron Leibowitz

Rabbi Aaron Leibowitz has been an innovative Jewish educator in Israel for over two decades. He began as a Program Director at Gesher. After three years as an Educational Officer in the IDF, he received his ordination from the Israeli Rabbinate. He then built a successful business in Experiential Education and Corporate Training, and helped found Yeshivat Derech Etz Chaim. Rav Aaron spent six years as the Rabbi of Kol Rina, the famous Miklat (Bomb Shelter) minyan, bringing a special blend of celebratory joy and profound insight to thousands every year.

Rabbi Aaron is the founder of Hashgacha Pratit, an alternative community based Kosher food supervision challenging the monopoly of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate. His smicha is from Rabbis Shlomo Riskin and Chaim Brovender. He is an Orthodox City Council member who believes in an inclusive and pluralistic city.

Rabbi Professor Martin Lockshin

Marty served for a number of years as Chair of the Department of Humanities at York University and as Director of York’s Centre for Jewish Studies. He taught a wide array of Humanities courses connected to Judaism, or to Judaism and Christianity, and many “text” courses in Hebrew in the Department of Languages, Literature, and Linguistics. Even in lecture courses, his favorite kind of teaching involves close reading of texts together with the students. In 2014 York University honored Marty by appointing him to the rare rank of University Professor. He retired in 2016 and he and his wife moved to Israel. He has been teaching in Israel at Pardes and a number of other venues and continues to be an active researcher.

Outside of the academy, Marty has also always been interested in tradition and innovation. He writes widely in the popular Jewish press about the phenomenon of Jewish “modern Orthodoxy” in North America and Israel. He has served and continues to serve as rabbi or “halakhic advisor” for a number of “partnership minyanim,” where prayer services follow Orthodox patterns but provide expanded roles for women.

Rabbi Asher Lopatin

Rabbi Asher Lopatin is the founding director of the Detroit Center for Civil Discourse, a nonprofit designed to bring diverse people together in enriching dialogue, as well as the founding rabbi of Kehillat Etz Chayim, a new, Modern Orthodox synagogue in metropolitan Detroit. Prior to serving in these roles, he was president of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School in New York and the senior rabbi of Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel Congregation in Chicago. While in Chicago, he and his wife, Rachel, helped found the pluralistic Chicago Jewish Day School and he co-chaired the Jewish Muslim Community Building Initiative of the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs.

A Rhodes Scholar and Truman Fellow with an M. Phil in Medieval Arabic Thought from Oxford University, Rabbi Lopatin also has done doctoral work at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, in Islamic Fundamentalist attitudes towards Jews and Israel. He received ordination from Rav Ahron Soloveichik and Yeshivas Brisk in Chicago, and from Yeshiva University, as a Wexner Graduate Fellow. In 2011, Rabbi Lopatin became a permanent member of The Council on Foreign Relations.

Professor Shaul Magid

Shaul Magid is a faculty member and Kogod senior research fellow at Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. He is a Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College where he teaches Jewish Studies and Religion, rabbi of the Fire Island Synagogue in Sea View, NY, contributing editor to Tablet Magazine and editor of Jewish Thought and Culture at Tikkun Magazine. He is also a member of the American Academy for Jewish Research. Shaul received his rabbinical ordination in Jerusalem and his PhD from Brandeis University.

Shaul’s academic work focuses on Jewish mysticism, Hasidism, and modern Jewish thought with specific emphasis on American Judaism, Jewishness, and collective identity.

He has published several books, including American Post-Judaism (Indiana University Press, 2013), which investigates questions of ethnicity in a post-ethnic society, From Metaphysics to Midrash: Myth, History, and the Interpretation of Scripture in Lurianic Kabbalah which won the 2008 American Academy of Religion Best Book Award and Hasidism Incarnate: Hasidism, Christianity, and the Construction of Modern Judaism (Stanford University Press, 2014), which explores the deep engagement of Hasidism and invites us to reconsider the differences between Judaism and Christianity in a world not burdened by the Christian persecution of Jews.

Professor Daniel Matt

Professor Daniel Matt is a teacher of Jewish spirituality and one of the world’s leading authorities on Kabbalah and the Zohar. He has been featured in Time and Newsweek, and has appeared on National Public Radio and the History Channel. He has published over a dozen books, including The Essential Kabbalah (translated into eight languages), Zohar: Annotated and Explained, and God and the Big Bang: Discovering Harmony between Science and Spirituality (revised edition, 2016).

Several years ago Daniel completed an 18-year project of translating and annotating the Zohar. In 2016, Stanford University Press published his ninth volume of The Zohar: Pritzker Edition, concluding the Zohar’s main commentary on the Torah. For this work, Daniel has been honored with a National Jewish Book Award and a Koret Jewish Book Award. The Koret award hailed his translation as “a monumental contribution to the history of Jewish thought.”

Daniel received his Ph.D. from Brandeis University and for twenty years served as professor at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He has also taught at Stanford University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Daniel lives in Berkeley with his wife Hana. Currently he is writing a biography of Elijah the Prophet for the Yale Jewish Lives series. He also teaches Zohar online. For information about this ongoing Zohar course, see the website of Stanford University Press: https://www.sup.org/zohar/course

Professor Paul Mendes-Flohr

Paul Mendes-Flohr is Professor Emeritus of Modern Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is currently the Dorothy Grant Mclear Professor of Jewish Intellectual History at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. His most recent book is Martin Buber. A Life of Dissent and Dialogue, soon to be published by Yale University Press.

Rabbi Leon Morris

Rabbi Leon Morris is the President of Pardes and is the first alumnus to head the institution (Year Program alumnus ’94-’95; Summer Program alumnus ’93 and ’94). Leon made aliyah with his wife Dasee Berkowitz (Pardes Year Program alumna ’94-’95) and their three children in June 2014, after serving as the rabbi of Temple Adas Israel in Sag Harbor, NY. He was the founding director of the Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning at Temple Emanu-El (now the Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center) in Manhattan. Before coming to Pardes, Leon served as a Vice President for Israel Programs at the Shalom Hartman Institute and was a faculty member at Hebrew Union College.

Ordained from Hebrew Union College in 1997 where he was a Wexner Graduate Fellow, he has worked extensively with the Jewish community of India, beginning in 1990 when he served as a Jewish Service Corps volunteer for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. He was also a Mandel Jerusalem Fellow. Leon has taught at Orthodox, Conservative and Reform institutions and is a regular contributor to the Jewish, US and Israeli press. He is an editor of the new Reform High Holy Day machzor, Mishkan HaNefesh and is a contributor to Jewish Theology in Our Time: A New Generation Explores the Foundations and Future of Jewish Belief (edited by Elliot Cosgrove, Jewish Lights, 2010).

Professor David Myers

David N. Myers holds the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Chair in Jewish History at UCLA.  As of fall 2017, he serves as the director of the Luskin Center for History and Policy.  He previously served as chair of the UCLA History Department (2010-2015) and as director of the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies (1996-2000 and 2004-2010).  He received his A.B. from Yale College in 1982, and undertook graduate studies at Tel-Aviv and Harvard Universities before completing his doctorate at Columbia in 1991. He has written extensively in the fields of modern Jewish intellectual and cultural history. He has authored Re-Inventing the Jewish Past: European Jewish Intellectuals and the Zionist Return to History (Oxford: 1995), Resisting History: Historicism and its Discontents in German-Jewish Thought (Princeton, 2003), Between Jew and Arab: The Lost Voice of Simon Rawidowicz (Brandeis University Press, 2008), Jewish History: A Very Short Introduction  (2017), and The Stakes of History: On the Use and Abuse of Jewish History for Life  (2018). Myers has edited or co-edited eight books, including The Jewish Past Revisited and Enlightenment and Diaspora: The Armenian and Jewish Cases, and The Faith of Fallen Jews: Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi and the Writing of Jewish History. Myers is an elected fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research and the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities.

Rabbi Daniel Nevins

Rabbi Daniel Nevins is the Pearl Resnick Dean of The Rabbinical School and dean of the Division of Religious Leadership of The Jewish Theological Seminary. He represents JTS on the Leadership Council of Conservative Judaism and the Executive Council, Joint Placement Commission, and Committee on Jewish Law and Standards (CJLS) of the Rabbinical Assembly. He has written responsa on the halakhic topics of personal status, disabilities, bioethics, technology, and homosexuality.

Rabbi Nevins began his work at JTS in July 2007, after serving for 13 years as rabbi of Adat Shalom Synagogue in Farmington Hills, Michigan. During those years, Rabbi Nevins led numerous organizations, serving as president of the Michigan Board of Rabbis, the Farmington Area Interfaith Association, and the Michigan region of the Rabbinical Assembly. He was also a founding board member and faculty member at the Frankel Academy of Metropolitan Detroit. Rabbi Nevins led many trips to Israel, including family and teen missions, solidarity trips, and an interfaith clergy tour of Rome and Israel in 2005. He has lectured across the United States and served as faculty for the Wexner Heritage Foundation’s summer institute.

Rabbi Jonah Pesner

Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner serves as the Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. He has led the Religious Action Center since 2015. Rabbi Pesner also serves as Senior Vice President of the Union for Reform Judaism, a position to which he was appointed to in 2011. Named one of the most influential rabbis in America by Newsweek magazine, he is an inspirational leader, creative entrepreneur and tireless advocate for social justice.

Professor Tamar Ross

Professor Tamar Ross is Professor Emeritus of the Department of Jewish philosophy at Bar Ilan University.  She continues to teach at Midreshet Lindenbaum. She did her Ph.D. at the Hebrew University and served as a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Jewish Studies at Harvard.  She is the author of Expanding the Palace of Torah: Orthodoxy and Feminism.  Her areas of expertise include: concepts of God, revelation, religious epistemology, philosophy of halacha, the Musar movement, and the thought of Rabbi A.I. Kook.

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg is an award-winning author and writer.  She was named by Newsweek and The Daily Beast as one of ten “rabbis to watch,” by the Forward as one of the top 50 most influential women rabbis, and called a “wunderkund of Jewish feminism” by Publishers Weekly.  She written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Salon, Time, and many other publications, and contributes regularly to The Washington Post and The Forward.  She has been featured on NPR a number of times, as well as in The Atlantic, USA Today, NBC News, CNN, MTV News, Vice, Upworthy, the Canadian Broadcasting Company, Al Jazeera America, Reese Witherspoon’s podcast How It Is, and elsewhere.

She is the author of seven books; Nurture the Wow: Finding Spirituality in the Frustration, Boredom, Tears, Poop, Desperation, Wonder, and Radical Amazement of Parenting (Flatiron Books), which a the National Jewish Book Award finalist and PJ Library Parents’ Choice selection; Surprised By God: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Religion (Beacon Press), nominated for the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish literature and a Hadassah Book Club selection. Her other books include The Passionate Torah: Sex and Judaism (NYU Press), Yentl’s Revenge: The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism (Seal Press), and, with Rabbi Elliot Dorff, three books for the Jewish Publication Society’s Jewish Choices/Jewish Voices series: Sex and Intimacy, War and National Security, and Social Justice.

Professor Jonathan D. Sarna

Professor 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 at Brandeis University and the director of the Hornstein Program in Jewish Professional Leadership. He is regarded as one of the most prominent historians of American Judaism. Sarna is a prolific author, including the seminal work on the 350th anniversary of the founding of the American Jewish community, American Judaism: A History. The book won a number of awards, including the National Jewish Book Award for 2004 and the Publishers Weekly Best Religion Book 2004 award. Sarna received the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry‘s Marshall Sklare Award in 2002. Professor Sarna is a regular contributor on religion to the Newsweek–Washingtonpost.com joint project On Faith.

Rabbi Dr. Sid Schwarz

Rabbi Sid Schwarz has been a congregational rabbi, a social entrepreneur, the CEO of several non-profits and an author. Rabbi Sid is currently a Senior Fellow at Hazon. As part of that work, Rabbi Sid has direct responsibility for two national projects. He created and directs the Clergy Leadership Incubator (CLI), a program that trains rabbis to be visionary spiritual leaders. He also created and directs the Kenissa: Communities of Meaning Network which is building the capacity of emerging spiritual communities across the country.

Dr. Schwarz holds a Ph.D. in Jewish history and is the author of more than 100 articles and three groundbreaking books, Finding a Spiritual Home: How a New Generation of Jews Can Transform the American Synagogue (Jewish Lights, 2000), Judaism and Justice: The Jewish Passion to Repair the World (Jewish Lights, 2006), and Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Future (Jewish Lights, 2013).

Rabbi Sid is married to Sandy Perlstein and they have three children, Danny, married to Jamie Geller, Joel and Jennifer.

Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller

Chaim Seidler-Feller has been working with students and faculty as the Executive Director of the Yitzhak Rabin Hillel Center for Jewish Life at UCLA for thirty-eight years. He is also the director of the Hartman Fellowship for Campus Professionals. He was ordained in 1971 at Yeshiva University where he completed a Masters in Rabbinic Literature. Chaim is a lecturer in the Departments of Sociology and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA and in the Department of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University. He is also a faculty member of the Shalom Hartman Institute for Advanced Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, and of the Wexner Heritage Foundation. He was a founding member of Americans for Peace Now.The International Hillel Center has granted Chaim the Hillel Professional Recognition Award “for blending the love of Jewish tradition with the modern intellectual approach of the university.” Chaim was a rabbinic consultant to Barbra Streisand during the making of the film Yentl. He is married to Dr. Doreen Seidler-Feller, a clinical psychologist, and is the father of Shulie, a photo-journalist and Shaul, a rabbinic student at Yeshiva University, who is pursuing an advanced degree in Jewish history.

Rabbi David Silber

Rabbi David Silber is the Founder and Dean of Drisha Institute for Jewish Education. He received ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. He received the Covenant Award in 2000. He is the author of A Passover Haggadah: Go Forth and Learn (JPS, 2011).

Rabbi Professor Daniel Sperber

Rabbi Professor Daniel Sperber is the Milan Roven Professor of Talmud Studies at Bar-Ilan University. As well as being an expert in classical philology, Jewish art history, Jewish customs & education, and Talmudic studies, Rabbi Prof. Sperber is an author and commentator who has called for a greater inclusion of women in certain ritual services, including ordination. Rabbi Sperber’s latest books is On the Relationship of Mitzvot Between Man and His Neighbor and Man and His Maker (Urim). 

Abby Stein

Abby Stein is an American transgender author, activist, blogger, model, rabbi, and speaker. She is the first openly transgender woman raised in a Hasidic community, and is a direct descendant of Hasidic Judaism’s founder the Baal Shem Tov. In 2015, she founded the first support group nationwide for trans people of Orthodox background. Stein is also the first woman, and the first openly transgender woman, to have been ordained by an Orthodox institution, having received her rabbinical degree in 2011, before coming out as transgender.

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin is a spiritual leader and scholar. He lectures across the US, and serves as an associate of CLAL, the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, and as spiritual leader of the Synagogue for the Performing Arts in Los Angeles. He lives in New York City with his wife, writer Deborah Telushkin, and their four children. Born and raised in New York, he is a graduate and ordained rabbi of Yeshiva University in New York. He later pursued graduate studies in Jewish history at Columbia University. He is an author of many books on Jewish theology, philosophy, and history, and has written several novels as well as popular articles and television and film scripts. He has also written several books on Judaism and anti-Semitism with childhood friend and LA radio personality, Dennis Praeger.

Rabbi Avi Weiss

Rabbi Avi Weiss is the Founder and President of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (the YCT Rabbinical School), the Founder founder of Yeshivat Maharat for Orthodox women, and the Senior Rabbi of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, a modern and Open Orthodox congregation of 850 families in Bronx, NY. Rabbi Weiss is the National President of the AMCHA – the Coalition for Jewish Concerns, a grassroots organization that speaks out for Jewish causes throughout the world. He has authored multiple books.

Dr. Steven Windmueller

Steven Windmueller, Ph.D. is the Rabbi Alfred Gottschalk Emeritus Professor of Jewish Communal Service at the Jack H. Skirball Campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles. Prior to coming to HUC, Dr.Windmueller served for ten years as the JCRC Director of the LA Jewish Federation. Between 1973-1985, he was the director of the Greater Albany Jewish Federation (now the Federation of Northeastern New York). He began his career on the staff of the American Jewish Committtee. The author of four books and numerous articles, Steven Windmueller focuses his research and writings on Jewish political behavior, communal trends, and contemporary anti-Semitism.

Rabbi David J. Wolpe

Rabbi David Wolpe is the rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, an author, and public speaker. He was named the most influential rabbi in America by Newsweek in 2012 and one of the 50 most influential Jews in the world by the Jerusalem Post. In addition, Rabbi Wolpe was named one of Jewish Daily Forward‘s 50, and one of the hundred most influential people in Los Angeles by Los Angeles Magazine. Author of seven books and a frequent television guest, Wolpe writes a weekly column in The Jewish Week. 

Dr. Wendy Zierler

Dr. Wendy Zierler serves as Sigmund Falk Professor of Feminist Studies and Modern Jewish Literature at Hebrew Union College- Jewish Institute of Religions in New York (HUC-JIR/New York).

Prior to joining HUC-JIR, she was a Research Fellow in the English Department of Hong Kong University, where she lived for five and a half years while teaching at the University.

Dr. Wendy Zierler is Co-Editor of Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literary History.

Noam Zion

Noam Zion is senior faculty and curriculum writer for the Shalom Hartman Institute of Jerusalem (1978-2019). He holds an M.A. in philosophy from Columbia University, and among his books are A Different Night: The Family Participation Haggadah (1997); Jewish Giving in Comparative Perspectives: Tzedakah, Charity and Greek Philanthropy (2013); Talmudic Marital Dramas (2018) and Foundations of Family Conflict and Reconciliation in Genesis (multidisciplinary study guides for educators).

Professor Zvi Zohar

Zvi Zohar is a senior research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. He is the Chauncey Stillman Professor of Sephardic Law and Ethics at Bar-Ilan University, where he teaches in the Faculties of Law and Jewish Studies and is editor in chief of the international Journal of Law, Religion and State. At Shalom Hartman Institute, he heads the Alan and Loraine Fischer Family Center for Halakha.

Professor Zohar’s main area of research is the history and development of halakha from the earliest times to present. He has a special interest in the halakhic writings of Sephardic and Mizrahi rabbis in modern times. Professor Zohar has published more than 100 books and scholarly articles in Hebrew, English, French, and German.

His most recent book in English, Rabbinic Creativity in the Modern Middle East, was published in 2013 by the Hartman Institute’s Kogod Library of Judaic Studies in conjunction with Bloomington Academic Press.