Speaker Bios
A
Wendy Amsellem is Director of the Dr. Beth Samuels High School Program and an alumna of the Drisha Scholars Circle. She is pursuing a PhD in Judaic Studies at New York University and has a BA in History and Literature from Harvard University.
Nissan Antine was a rabbinical student at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School. He earned a B.A. in Religion and Philosophy from Case Western Reserve University. Before entering rabbinical school, Nissan was a member of the Torat Zion Kollel, where he gave classes to both adults and high-school students
B
Prof. Menachem Ben Sasson is a former Rector of The Hebrew University and a professor at its Institute for Jewish Studies.
Joseph Berger, veteran New York Times reporter, and author of “Displaced Persons: Growing Up American After the Holocaust” to speak at The Davar Institute. Mr. Berger, deputy education editor of The New York Times, was born in Russia in 1944. In March 1950 he came to New York at the age of five with his parents and three-year-old brother, who was born in a displaced persons camp outside Berlin. Joseph Berger’s memoir, “Displaced Persons: Growing Up American After the Holocaust”, depicts his family’s struggle as immigrant Polish Jews and Holocaust survivors, as they endeavor to put down lasting roots amid the unforgiving and often bewildering landscape of Manhattan’s Upper West Side and the Bronx in the 1950s and 1960s. “Displaced Persons” illuminates a little-known aspect of Holocaust history, the experience of 140,000 refugees who came to the United States between 1947 and 1953. “By conjuring a complexly interwoven familial history that takes the reader across the boundaries of time, Berger lays the foundation for his thoughts about the larger immigrant experience,” wrote Publishers Weekly in 2001. Berger pays homage to his parents’ immigrant lives and days of self- sacrifice.
Rabbi Joshua Berman studied at Yeshivat Har-Etzion, received a B.A. in religion at Princeton University, and holds a doctorate in Bible from Bar-Ilan University. He is a lecturer in Tanach at Bar-Ilan University and an Associate Fellow at the Shalem Center. He is the author, most recently, of Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought (Oxford University Press, 2008), which reveals the revolution in social and political thought witnessed in the Tanakh relative to the surrounding cultures of the ancient Near East. He is also the author of The Temple: Its Symbolism and Meaning Then and Now (Jason Aronson, 1995), and Narrative Analogy in the Hebrew Bible (Brill, 2004). His articles on contemporary issues have appeared in the pages of Tradition, L’Eylah, Midstream, Judaism and the Jerusalem Post. His website is www.createdequalthebook.com .
Rabbi David Bigman is Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Ma’ale Gilboa; founder, instructor and board member of the women’s Yeshiva at Kibbutz Ein HaNatziv; and Chairman of the Non-political branch of Meimad. Born in Detroit, he received a BA in Economics from Wayne State University, was a student at Yeshivat Beit Midrash for Torah in Skokie (Rabbi Aharon Soloveitchik, Rosh Yeshiva), and Yeshiva of Detroit (Rabbi Leib Bakst, Rosh Yeshiva). Having made Aliyah right after college graduation, he served in the Israeli Defense Forces, Nahal Unit, and was a student at Yeshivat Netzach Yisrael (Rabbi Yisrael Zeev Gustman, Rosh Yeshiva). He was ordained at the Ariel Institute and received his Teachers Certificate from the Herzog College.
Dr. Alan Brill is Assistant Professor of Jewish Thought at Yeshiva College and BRGS. He was ordained at RIETS and completed a Ph.D. at Fordham University. He is the author of the forthcoming book “Thinking God: The Intellectual Mysticism and Spiritual Psychology of R. Zadok HaKohen of Lublin.” Dr. Brill lectures widely on a many topics relating to Jewish thought and spirituality.
Rabbi Chaim Brovender is Dean and Founder of Midreshet Lindenbaum and a world-renowned teacher and educator.
C
Jerome Chanes is the author most recently ofAntisemitism: A Reference Guide, the first reference work on the topic; of the award-winning A Dark Side of History: Antisemitism through the Ages, and of the widely-used monograph, A Primer on the American Jewish Community, now going into its third edition. His edited works,Antisemitism in America Today: Exploding the Myths; andA Portrait of the American Jewish Community, have become standard texts in many university courses. He is an author and editor in the forthcoming Second Edition of theEncyclopedia Judaica. He has authored more than 75 book-chapters, articles and papers, reviews, and monographs.
Jerome Chanes has taught Jewish communal issues and literature, American Jewish sociology and history, and Biblical Hebrew at Barnard College and at Yeshiva University, and has taught and lectured widely in the USA and abroad, including at Oxford, MIT, and the Jagiellonian University (Krakow). He is Faculty Scholar at the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University.
Chanes is a contributing editor at the Forward, and writes widely on American Jewry and on Jewish public-affairs issues. For fifteen years he was the national-affairs director of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council. Chanes’s current projects include monographs on the American Jewish encounter with Zionism and the State of Israel the changing contours of the American Jewish organizational structure and agenda, and on issues of “governance” in the worldwide Jewish communal organizational structure; and books on the history and impact of the Jewish “counterculture” (“Jewish Renewal”) movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s, on “Jewish” New York, on the history of the Christian-Jewish encounter; and on lesser-known pianists.
Dr. Simeon Chavel has taken degrees in English Literature (BA, Yeshiva Univ.), Religious Studies (MA, Indiana Univ.), and Biblical Studies (PhD, Hebrew Univ.). He has taught at Hebrew University and Haifa University, and is now Lecturer in Hebrew Bible in the Department of Religion at Princeton University. He has also served in the Melton Center for Jewish Education at the Hebrew University, training principals and teachers from America to Australia.
Dr. Stephen P. Cohen served as Academic Consultant to the National Intelligence Council from 2003-2006 and on the US Advisory Group on Public Diplomacy for the Arab and Muslim World in 2003. He has made some 150 trips to the region over 40 years, and has taught in the US at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Lehigh, City University of New York, and at Middle East institutions in Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. He speaks and meets regularly with high-level American, Israeli, Palestinian, Arab and European officials. Cohen is the founder and president of the Institute for Middle East Peace and Development, which remains his institutional base, enabling him to serve as facilitator and private intermediary in peace-making and peace-building. He brought about the first secret official negotiations between Israel and the PLO under the supervision of Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres; served as a behind-the-scenes confidant of Israel’s Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan and Egypt’s President Anwar El Sadat in the launching of their peace process; and is a senior member of the United States group engaged in off-the-record dialogue with Syria.
Stephen P. Cohen, PhD is the President of the Institute for Middle East Peace & Development. www.MEPD.org
Yardena Cope-Yossef is a lecturer in Talmud and Jewish Law, primarily at Matan (J-m and Beit Shemesh) and the director of the Advanced Talmudic Institute at Matan. An Israeli-trained lawyer and member of the bar, she recently set up “Mifnim”-Center for Legal and Halakhic Solutions. She hails from Chicago and lives in Tekoa Israel m+5.
D
Professor Jeremy Dauber grew up in Northern New Jersey, the oldest of three boys. Before heading to college, he studied abroad for a year at a yeshiva in Israel. He is currently an associate professor in the Germanic Languages and Literatures department at Columbia University, where he is also the director of the Yiddish studies program and director of the university’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. He has written Antonio’s Devils: Writers of the Jewish Enlightenment and the Birth of Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literature and co-edited and co-translated (with Joel Berkowitz) an anthology called Landmark Yiddish Plays. He has also written a television and movie review column for the Christian Science Monitor.
E
Dr. David Ellenson, President of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) and I.H. and Anna Grancell Professor of Jewish Religious Thought, is a distinguished rabbi, scholar, and leader of the Reform Movement. He is internationally recognized for his publications and research in the areas of Jewish religious thought, ethics, and modern Jewish history. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1981 and was ordained by HUC-JIR in 1977. He is a Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of Jerusalem and a Fellow and Lecturer at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Rabbi Ellenson’s extensive publications include Tradition in Transition: Orthodoxy, Halakhah and the Boundaries of Modern Jewish History (1989), Rabbi Esriel Hildesheimer and the Creation of a Modern Jewish Orthodoxy (1990) (nominated for the National Jewish Book Council’s award for outstanding book in Jewish History, 1990), and Between Tradition and Culture: The Dialectics of Jewish Religion and Identity in the Modern World (1994). His latest book, After Emancipation: Jewish Religious Responses to Modernity, a compilation of essays on Jewish values and identity, the challenge of emancipation, denominational responses, modern responsa, and contemporary works of legal and liturgical creativity, was published by Hebrew Union College Press in 2004.
F
Rabbi Dr. Seth Farber is a Modern Orthodox rabbi and historian in Israel, best known for his work helping Jews navigate the Israeli religious bureaucracy. Farber grew up in Riverdale, Bronx, New York, and is a graduate of New York University. He was ordained by the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University in 1991, received his Masters in Judaic Studies from Yeshiva University in 1995, and a PhD from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 2000. He was a teacher at the Maimonides School in Brookline, Massachusetts before moving to Israel.
Farber is widely-known as the founder and director of ITIM: The Jewish Life Information Center, an organization that aims to assist Israelis with the legal intricacies of personal status — marriage, divorce, conversion, and burial — which are administered by the Ministry of Religious Affairs in a manner that often leaves families bewildered, overwhelmed, and resentful. Farber is widely cited in the press on the politically-fraught issues of personal status among Jews in Israel.
The New York Times called Farber a “pragmatic idealist” who believes that Orthodox Jews — including the rabbinate — and non-Orthodox Jews need to learn to “to trust each other” sufficiently to work together on difficult issues of personal status.
Farber’s great-great-great-grandfather was the pre-eminent Central European Rabbi Moshe Sofer, better known as the Khasom Sofer.
http://www.itim.org.il/bin/en.jsp?enPage=HomePage_E
Zev Farber is a second year rabbinical student at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School. He studied for 4 years at Yeshivat Bnei Torah in New York and served as Director of the Yeshivat Bnei Torah High School in Israel. He has a BA in psychology from Touro College and an MA in Biblical History from Hebrew University.
Sam Feinsmith completed his undergraduate studies at Columbia University and List College. He is a candidate for a Master’s degree in Talmud and Rabbinics from JTS. Currently in his third year at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, Sam serves as rabbinic intern to the constituents of Congregation Bnai David-Judea, Los Angeles. Having taught at various institutions of Jewish learning since 1995, and in an array of denominational settings, he is currently developing and implementing curricula designed to empower teens in their struggle to define their Jewish identities through Torah and critical exploration.
Dr. Adam S. Ferziger teaches in the Department of Jewish History at Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel. His research focuses on the social and intellectual history of modern Judaism in Europe, the United States and Israel. Specifically, he has lectured and published on the emergence of modern Jewish religious denominations and their ideologies, modern Jewish identity formation, the history of the modern rabbinate and on the encounter between halakhah and contemporary social realities. The subject of his doctoral dissertation, which was awarded the highest distinction, is the development of Orthodox Judaism’s attitudes towards non-observant Jews in the 18th and 19th centuries. Dr. Ferziger is a senior research fellow at Bar-Ilan’s Rappaport Center for the Study of Assimilation, a lecturer in the I.D.F. Educational Corps, and a senior historian for Heritage Seminars to Eastern Europe. In the latter capacity he has taught thousands of American youth about the legacy of Eastern European Jewry and the destruction of the Holocaust in the course of educational excursions to Poland, Lithuania and the Czech Republic. A native of Riverdale, New York, he attended the S.A.R. Academy, the Ramaz Upper School, Beit Midrash l’Torah (BMT) in Jerusalem, Yeshivat Har-Etzion (Gush), and received his rabbinical ordination from Yeshiva University (RIETS). He and his wife, Naomi (nee Weiss) moved to Israel in 1987. They live with their six children in Kfar-Sava, where he serves as rabbi of the Beit Binyamin Synagogue.
Professor Michael Fishbane – Nathan Cummings Professor of Jewish Studies in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago; also in the Committee on Jewish Studies and the College Ph.D. (Brandeis University)
Michael Fishbane 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). He is now completing a multi-leveled comprehensive commentary presenting the full range Jewish interpretations on the Song of Songs, as well as his own (modern Jewish) theology. In progress are a study of Jewish liturgical poetry and a treatment of spiritual exercises in Jewish religious history. Prof. Fishbane received a Guggenheim Fellowship, among other major grants, and has twice been a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University.
Prof. Fishbane is a member of the American Academy of Jewish Research, and has been recently awarded a Lifetime Achievement in Textual Studies by the National Foundation of Jewish Culture. His life and work will be written up in the forthcoming new edition of the Encyclopedia Judaica.
Professor Paul Franks is the Senator Jerahmiel S. and Carole S. Grafstein Chair in Jewish Philosophy at the University of Toronto. Born in England, he was educated at Gateshead Yeshiva; Balliol College, Oxford; and Harvard University. He has been Brackenbury Scholar at Oxford; Lady Davis Fellow at Hebrew University; Whiting Fellow at Harvard University; Fellow of the Michigan Society of Fellows and the American Council of Learned Societies; and a grantee of the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Paul has given many talks at universities and synagogues in England, Israel and North America. He has taught at the University of Michigan, Indiana University, the University of Notre Dame and the University of Chicago, and has taught in Toronto since 2004. He is the author of many articles on metaphysics and epistemology as well as Jewish philosophy. Among his books are “Franz Rosenzweig: Philosophical and Theological Writings” (2000) and “All or Nothing: Systematicity, Transcendental Arguments, and Skepticism in German Idealism” (2005). Paul is currently writing a book on Kant’s metaphysical and epistemological legacy for Oxford University Press and an introduction to modern Jewish Philosophy for Cambridge University Press.
G
Rav Yehuda Gilad studied in some of Israel’s finest yeshivot, including HaYishuv HeChadash in Tel Aviv, Mercaz HaRav in Jerusalem and Yeshivat Har Etzion in Alon Shvut. While enrolled at Yeshivat Har Etzion he completed the Hesder program, combining his studies with service as a combat soldier in the Israeli Army armored corps. During the course of his study, he received a teacher’s degree from the Herzog Teachers College and semicha from the Israeli Chief Rabbinate.
After receiving his semicha, Rabbi Gilad chose to return to the army as a chaplain and in 1983 was selected to serve as Rabbi of Kibbutz Lavi. During the years 1990-92 Rabbi Gilad took leave from his duties at Lavi to serve as Rabbi and Shaliach for the B’nai Akiva religious youth movement in London.
He returned to Kibbutz Lavi in 1993 and together with Rabbi Shmuel Reiner of Kibbutz Tirat Zvi, he founded Yeshivat Ma’ale Gilboa. Rabbi Gilad has been involved in on-going secular-religious and Arab-Jewish dialogue and was the primary organizer of Kennes Lavi and is an officer of the Central Committee of Meimad. He is a popular speaker and has been a spokesman for the morally sensitive in the religious community.
Rav Dr. Harel Gordon earned his PhD from Tel Aviv University writing on the Responsa of R. Moshe Feinstein. It is his interest in Rav Moshe and the American Jewish community that brought him to the US for the past two years (2007-2009). Rav Gordin taught in yeshivot hesder Or Etzion and Petach Tikva. He is the Rav of Hertzeliya Pituach.
Blu Greenberg is actively involved in integrating feminism and Judaism. She is founding president of the JOFA. Blu serves on the boards of many organizations, was chair of the National Jewish Family Center, the Jewish Book Council and the N.Y. Federation’s Task Force on Jewish Women. In 2000, she helped found One Voice: Jewish Women for Israel, a national coalition of Jewish women’s organizations. Co-founder of The Dialogue Group (Jewish and Palestinian women), a member of the Jewish Women’s Dialogue and co-chair of the Global Peace Initiative of Women, she has participated in many interfaith and inter-ethnic enterprises. Her books include On Women and Judaism: A View from Tradition, How to Run a Traditional Jewish Household, and Black Bread, Poems After the Holocaust.
Since 1973, she has been active in the movement to bridge feminism and Orthodox Judaism. She chaired the first International Conference on Feminism and Orthodoxy in 1997 and the second in 1998. She is the co-founder and first president of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance and has served on the boards of many organizations, including EDAH, the Covenant Foundation, Project Kesher, U.S. Israeli Women to Women, and the Jewish Foundation for Christian Rescuers. She is the current chair of the Petschek National Jewish Family Center, and a former president of the Jewish Book Council of America. She serves on the editorial board of Hadassah Magazine and on the advisory boards of Lilith, the Jewish Student Press Service, and the International Research Institute on Jewish Women.
She was a participant in Bill Moyers’ “Genesis” special on PBS and a consultant to the film “The Prince of Egypt,” and she serves on the Board of Religious Advisors to PBS’s “Religion and Ethics Newsweekly.” She lectures widely in Jewish communities and at universities in the U.S. and abroad.
Ms. Greenberg received a B.A. from Brooklyn College in political science, an M.A. from City University in clinical psychology, and an MS from Yeshiva University in Jewish history. She taught religious studies at the College of Mount St. Vincent from 1965 to 1973, and during a sabbatical year, lectured at Pardes Institute in Jerusalem. She continues to lecture widely at universities and Jewish communities around the world.
Blu Greenberg is listed in Who’s Who in America and Who’s Who in World Jewry. The New Jewish Women In America: An Historical Encyclopedia, features her as one of its entrees.
Rabbi Natan Greenberg has been described as the first post-modern Breslov hassid.
R. Natan integrates into his life and teachings a strong commitment to Clal Israel and the openness of the modern world while staying based in serious Torah learning. He is also heavily influenced by the teachings of Rebbe Nachman of Bratzlav. Having made Aliyah over twenty years ago he feels deeply connected the Land of Israel. He has been a farmer, a tour guide, and has spent many years as Torah teacher and outreach worker in Israel as well as the U.S.
R. Natan founded the Bat Ayin Yeshiva because he wanted to provide an alternative model for personal growth and serious Torah learning. R. Natan lives in Bat Ayin with his wife Ruth and their ten children.
Rosh Yeshivah of Bat Ayin, BA, Jewish history; Hebrew University; Army service in the IDF Tank Corps; Yeshivat Har Etzion; Breslov Kollel; Semichah, Chief Rabbinate of Israel
H
Rabbi Tully Harcsztark is Founding Principal of SAR High School in Riverdale, New York. He is co-founder and spiritual leader of Davar, a unique learning community in Teaneck, New Jersey. He also served as Rabbi of Congregation Keter Torah in Teaneck. He received his ordination from Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary at Yeshiva University and earned an M.A. in Jewish History from Bernard Revel Graduate School.
His work is centered on bridging theory and practice in the development of institutions committed to combining advanced study of classical Jewish texts with the study of general philosophy and culture. His research focuses on the study of Talmud and Jewish Thought against the backdrop of hermeneutics and cultural studies. In academic year 2010-11, Rabbi Harcsztark will be dividing his time between the Tikvah Fellowship and his responsibilities as Principal of SAR High School in Riverdale, NY.
Dr. Moshe Halbertal is the Co-director of the Shalom Hartman Institute Beit Midrash program and teaches Philosophy and Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was visiting professor at Harvard Law School and a Fellow at the Society of Fellows, Harvard University. His publications in English include “Idolatry” (co-authored by Dr. Avishai Margalit) and “People of the Book” (which we read as part of our Tuesday night lecture series in 2000), both published by Harvard University Press. In 1999, Dr. Halbertal was the first recipient of the newly instituted Bruno Prize established by the Rothschild Foundation.
Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. Together with Imam Abdullah Antepli of Duke University, he co-directs the Institute's Muslim Leadership Initiative (MLI), which teaches emerging young Muslim American leaders about Judaism, Jewish identity and Israel. Halevi’s 2013 book, Like Dreamers, won the Jewish Book Council's Everett Book of the Year Award. His latest book, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor, is a New York Times bestseller. He writes for leading op-ed pages in the US, including the Times and the Wall Street Journal, and is a former contributing editor to the New Republic.
Prof. David Hartman is the founder and director of The Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. He is a world-renowned lecturer and the author of several books including the following publications:
· Love and Terror in the God Encounter: The Theological Legacy of Joseph B. Soloveitchik (Jewish Lights, 2001);
· Israelis and the Jewish Tradition: An Ancient People Debating Its Future (Yale University Press, 2000);
· A Heart of Many Rooms (Jewish Lights Publishing, Vermont, 1999).
Dr. Tova Hartman received a Master in Jewish Philosophy from Hebrew University, a Master in Counseling Psychology from Boston College and holds a Ph.D. in Psychology from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. She currently lectures at Hebrew University’s School of Education in Jerusalem. Before teaching she worked as a clinician at the Jerusalem Women’s Counseling Center for two years. Dr. Hartman has written many articles on gender, religion, and education. She is one of the founding principals of Shira Hadasha, a new traditional synagogue in Jerusalem. Her book “Appropriately Subversive: Modern Mothers in Traditional Religions” was published by Harvard University Press last year.
Professor Warren Zev Harvey is chair of the Department of Jewish Thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he has taught since 1977. He is the author of many studies on medieval and modern Jewish philosophy, including Physics and Metaphysics in Hasdai Crescas (1998). Professor Harvey has held visiting appointments at Georgetown University, McGill University, University of Pennsylvania, Queens College (CUNY), Yale University, and Yeshiva University. He was an EMET Prize laureate in the humanities (2009). B.A., 1965, Columbia College; Ph.D., 1973, Columbia University
Dr David Hazony is Senior Editor of “Azure: Ideas for the Jewish Nation”, editor of a new compilation of the work of Eliezer Berkovits “Essential Essays” and the former President of The Shalem Center. Hazony has also written the book “The Ten Commandments: How Our Most Ancient Moral Text Can Renew Modern Life.
I
Reb Sammy Intrator was Reb Shlomo’s right hand person for many years. He was born in Baltimore, MD. As a child of Holocaust survivors, his early education included an old-world like cheder as well as day school studies at the Talmudic Academy. He later studied at Ner Israel Rabbinical College, Yeshivat Derech Chaim, and Yeshiva Kol Yaacov, where he received his Rabbinic ordination. He also received ordination from Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach z”l. Rabbi Intrator earned a degree in political science and worked for the New York City Council for 16 years. He assisted and studied with Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach for many years and traveled widely with him all over the U.S. and Israel, as well as to Communist Poland and Russia. He served as the assistant Rabbi at Congregation Kehillat Jacob (Carlebach Shul) from 1992 until the untimely passing of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach z”l. He then became the Senior Rabbi of the synagogue where he served from 1994 – 2000. Rabbi Intrator has been a guest speaker/rabbi at various universities, including UCLA, NYU, Amherst, Smith, and Oxford University (England) and has also participated in interfaith and interdenominational panels with leading spiritual leaders in NYC. He has been featured in several newspaper articles including the New York Times and has appeared on the television show Extra!. He now heads the Kavanah Life, an organization dedicated to raising spiritual consciousness in prayer and ritual, and is currently writing a book on the deeper meaning of prayer.
J
K
Dr. Menachem Kahana is a great guy. He was one of the first instructors at the Shalom Hartman Institute and was David Hartman’s chevruta. He has taught many prior Davar Scholars in Residence. He is currently on sabbatical in Teaneck and doing research at the Jewish Theological Seminary. His areas of expertise include Tannaitic Midrashim and Literature and Genizah texts as they relate to early Midrashim. He is on the Academic Advisory Committee at The Israel Matz Institute for Research in Jewish Law at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
His works include: “The Critical Editions of Mekhilta De-Rabbi Ishmael in the
Light of the Geniza Fragments” (Hebrew), Tarbiz 55 (1985).
Tobi Kahn – an internationally acclaimed painter and sculptor, Mr. Kahn has had his work exhibited in over 40 solo exhibitions and 60 museum and group shows. He is a graduate of the Pratt Institute and winner of the school’s Alumni Achievement Award in 2001. His exhibitions include: The Guggenheim Museum, the Houston Museum of Fine Art, The Jewish Museum and the Skirball Cultural Center. He is the artistic director and co-founder of Avoda, which offers Jewish arts workshops on college campuses. The praise for his work is reflected in the many books and newspapers that have reviewed his work.
Kahn has been the subject of art critics and writers nationally including: Karin Lipson, “By Artists for Artists,” New York Newsday, October 18, 1985; Michael Kimmelman, “Tobi Kahn,” The New York Times, May 19, 1989,p C33: Jeff Daniel, “Kahn’s works reflect the sea and the sky, but they’re not landscapes, “St Louis Post-Dispatch, Sunday, March 29, 1998, p E3 (Illus. “Natah,” “Lifanah”).
Tobi is the recipient of the Jewish Cultural Achievement Award- Individual Arts, awarded by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, to be presented on June 7th, 2004 by Paul LeClerc, the Chairman of the Board of the New Your City Library.
Professor Lawrence Kaplan is Professor of Jewish Studies at McGill University. He is a recognized authority on the philosophy and writings of R. Soloveitchik. He will speak on revelation and kabbalat ha-torah according to Rambam.
Rabbi Yissoschar Katz is a Gemara Rebbe at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School and at the SAR High School. He has taught at Ma’ayanot High School and at various other schools in Brooklyn. Rabbi Katz teaches an Adult Ed shiur that just completed the daf yomi cycle. He received semicha from UTA in 1986 and studied at Satmer and Brisk Yeshiva, and the Navaradok kolel.
Herb Keinon, a veteran diplomatic correspendent for The Jerusalem Post, is responsible for covering the Prime Minister and the foreign minister, often traveling with Ariel Sharon on his trips abroad. He has up-close knowledge and an intimate perspective on the current confrontation and the various diplomatic attempts to solve it. During his 20 years of reporting for The Jerusalem Post, he has covered a wide variety of topics, including Jerusalem, immigration and absorption, religious parties, and the Israeli settlements.
Keinon is a frequent guest commentator concerning the volatile situation in Israel on a variety of radio and television programs in the US, Canada, and Europe. He has also traveled all over Israel and Canada lecturing about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Ms. Rachel Keren is senior lecturer of Jewish Philosophy, Midrash and Tanach in the Midrasha of Ein Hanatziv. She is also an active member of Kolech – forum of religious feminist women in Israel.
Rivy Poupko Kletenik is the Director of Jewish Education Services
Ms. Judy Klitsner is senior faculty member at the Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies, where she teaches courses in Bible and Biblical Exegesis. She received a bachelors degree from Barnard College, and a teaching degree from the Jerusalem College for Women. She considers it her great privilege to have studied for many years under the tutelage of world renowned Bible expositor Prof. Nechama Leibovitz. Judy has published articles on biblical topics, and has lectured in a wide variety of adult educational forums, including: Jewish federations across the US, the London School of Jewish Studies, Modern Orthodoxy’s think-tank Edah conference in New York, JOFA and Kolech – Orthodox feminist organizations in the US and Israel, and student groups at American campuses including Harvard, Brandeis, and Yale.
Rabbi Shmuel Klitsner has been a very popular teacher at Midreshet Lindenbaum for several years. He began his studies at the Ida Crown Jewish Academy in Chicago where he had a very intense and meaningful hevruta with Lawrence Krule. He nonetheless survived this challenge,
and went on to study at Yeshivat Har Eztion, the Gruss Kollel and Yeshiva University from which he has received simcha.
Dr. Eugene Korn is currently Adjunct Professor of Jewish Thought at Seton Hall University and Judaic Scholar at the JCC and Federation of MetroWest New Jersey. He earned a doctorate in Philosophy from Columbia University and has taught at Columbia and Yeshiva Universities and at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. He is editor of The Edah Journal, a member of Edah’s Advisory Council and the national plenum of the Orthodox Caucus. He has published scholarly articles on Jewish ethics, the challenge of democratic Israel for religious tradition, pluralism, religious extremism and Tzelem Elokim, Jewish attitudes towards gentiles and non-Jewish culture, and business ethics.
L
Rabbi Nathan Laufer has been the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Wexner Heritage Foundation since 1994. He joined the Foundation in 1986, soon after its creation, and served as Director of Programs and Vice President before becoming President and CEO. Prior to his arrival at the Foundation, he was Director of East Coast Educational Programs for the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Director of Legal Affairs for the Coalition to Free Soviet Jews. Laufer, who is a graduate of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University and the Fordham University School of Law, teaches and lectures across the country regarding issues of leadership, Jewish identity, day school education and the future of Judaism and North American Jewry.
Prof. Daniel J. Lasker is the Norbert Blechner Professor of Jewish Values at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, where he teaches medieval Jewish philosophy in the Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought. Prof. Lasker holds three degrees from Brandeis University and also studied at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. In addition to Ben-Gurion University, he has taught at Princeton University, Yale University, University of Toronto, Ohio State University, University of Texas, University of Washington, Yeshiva University, Jewish Theological Seminary, Kirkland College and Gratz College.
Professor Lasker is the author of four books and over a hundred other publications in the fields of Jewish philosophy and theology, the Jewish-Christian debate, Karaism, the Jewish calendar, and Judaism and modern medicine. He has also lectured widely at universities and synagogues throughout North America, as well as at professional conferences on five continents. He is a member of a number of professional organizations, including the Society for Judaeo-Arabic Studies, of which he is a board member. In February 2002, Prof. Lasker was scholar-in-residence for the Jewish community of Houston, Texas. In August, 2003, he will be on the faculty of an NEH summer seminar “Representations of the ‘Other’: Jews in Medieval Christendom” to be held in Oxford, England, and in Fall, 2004, Prof. Lasker will be the Dean Ernest Schwarcz Eminent Visiting Professor of Jewish Philosophy at Queens College of the City University of New York.
Dr. Gila Leiter is currently an Assistant Clinical Professor at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine and an assistant attending in the OB/GYN Department at Mount Sinai Hospital. She also has her own OB/GYN private practice in New York. Gila received her BA Magna Cum Laude from Yeshiva University in 1978 and was awarded the Merit Scholarship from the Department of Social Medicine, Hadassah Medical School in Jerusalem in 1979. From 1979 – 1983, she attended the Albert Einstein Medical School and received her medical degree. Gila completed her residency in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.
Dr. Leiter is the author of “EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW TO HAVE A HEALTHY TWIN PREGNANCY” Bantam Dell – November 2000
She hails from Brooklyn, is a good friend and an active member of Davar, and lives down the block.
Batya Levine uses song as a tool for healing and resilience. She believes in the liberatory potential of song to loosen what is bound within each of us, and resource us as we work to build a more just and beautiful world. She centers this approach in her work as a communal song leader, musician, shaliach tzibur (Jewish prayer leader), cultural organizer and facilitator. As a lifelong student of Jewish song, ritual and practice, Batya supports people to dig into the juiciness of Jewish tradition, for the sake of healing and connection. This work is especially important for those of us who have felt disconnected, alienated or marginalized from Jewish tradition and within Jewish community. Rooted in the traditional wisdom and ruach (spirit) of her Modern Orthodox upbringing, she is dedicated to building a vibrant Judaism that simultaneously reaches backward and forward in time, and is wide enough for our whole selves.
Rabbi Mayer Lichtenstein is a Rosh Yeshiva at the Yeshivat Kibbutz Hadati in Ein Tzurim. He also teaches at the advanced talmud program at MaTaN and the student beit midrash in Hebrew University– Beit Midrash Chavruta. Rabbi Lichtenstein has Semikha from the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and a B. A. in Jewish history from Hebrew University.
Rabbi Dov Linzer is the Rosh Yeshiva of the Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School on the Upper West Side of Manhattan (www.yctorah.org). A recipient of both the Javits and Wexner Graduate fellowships, he has done graduate work in philosophy and is now pursuing a doctorate in Religion at Columbia University. He was ordained by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. Rabbi Linzer has published in Torah journals (www.hir.org/torah/linzer/default.htm) and lectures widely at synagogues and conferences on topics relating to Halakha, Orthodoxy, and modernity.
Yair Lorberbaum was born in Israel, and received his doctorate in Jewish thought from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Yair Lorbebraum is a professor at Bar-Ilan University’s Law School and he is a Senior Researcher at the Shalom Hartman Institute. Yair has served as a lecturer at Cardozo Law School, University of Pennsylvania Law School, Princeton University, and Yale University. He published numerous articles and books on Jewish thought, Jewish Law and Political and Legal Theory. On his book: Image of God: Halakha and Aggadah [Hebrew] Schocken: Tel Aviv and Jerusalem 2004 Yair Lorberbaum won the prestigious Goldstein-Goren Book Award for 2007-2010; the award is bestowed once every three years to the author of the best recent book in the field of Jewish thought. He is the Co-author of: The Jewish Political Thought, Vol. 1: Authority, Yale University Press, New Haven & London 2000. His recent book is: Subordinated King, Kingship in Classical Judaism, Bar Ilan Press: Ramat Gan, 2008 (forthcoming in English: Continuum [2010]).
For more information on Prof. Lorberbaum, see:http://www.nyutikvah.org/fellows/fellows_10_11/yair_lorberbaum.html
Martin Lockshin was born and educated in Toronto. He studied in Israel (where he received rabbinical ordination at Yeshivat Mercaz Harav Kook) and in the United States (where he earned his PhD from Brandeis University). He has been working at York University for the last 25 years, where he is professor of Humanities and Hebrew. He was recently appointed the Director of the Centre for Jewish Studies at York. Marty’s expertise is in the history of Jewish Bible commentaries, and on the intellectual interactions between Jews and Christians. He has published three books and many academic articles. Marty is married and has four children. He is an active member of the Jewish community of Toronto and often writes for the popular Jewish press. He is a popular speaker and has been a guest lecturer at Drisha and at the recent Edah Conference in NYC.
M
Rabbi Michael Melchior was born in 1954 in Denmark. He received his rabbinical ordination from Yeshivat Hakotel in Jerusalem. From a long line of Scandanavian rabbis, he has served as rabbi of a Jerusalem congregation since 1986, and also holds the title of Chief Rabbi of Norway (since 1980). Melchior is International Director of the Elie Wiesel Foundation as well as an administrator of varous human rights, immigration and educational organizations. Among his many awards are the Norwegian Nobel Institute’s Prize for Tolerance and Bridge-Building, and Yeshivat Hakotel’s Award for Work in the Diaspora Rabbinate. Melchior has written numerous articles published in the Israeli and
foreign press. Since 1996, Rabbi Melchior has been the chairman of Meimad, a modern-Orthodox party, which in 1999 became a faction of One Israel. He was elected to the Knesset in May 1999. From August 1999 until March 2001, Melchior served as Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister, responsible for Diaspora and social affairs. Michael Melchior served as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs from March 2001 until October 2002. He is married and the father of five.
N
O
P
Q
R
Rabbi Chaim Rapoport was born in Manchester, England, in 1963 where his father served as the Rabbi of one of the largest synagogues – Higher Crumpsall Synagogue – for some 40 years. After his school years, Rabbi Rapoport attended the Yeshivot of Manchester, Gateshead, Torat Emet in Jerusalem and the central Lubavitch Yeshivah in New York. In 1987 he went with his wife Rachel Clara to join the community Kollel in Melbourne, Australia, where he officiated and lectured in several communities, including the far flung Launceston in Tasmania. In 1989, Rabbi Rapoport took up position as head of the Leeds Kollel, a position which he occupied until the end of 1994. In the years 1994 – 1997 Rabbi Rapoport served as Minister in Birmingham and the Head of the Birmingham Rabbinic Board. In September 1997 Rabbi Rapoport assumed his current position as Rabbi to the Ilford Synagogue, Beehive Lane. In 1998 Rabbi Rapoport was appointed as member of the UK Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sack’s Cabinet and Advisor to the Chief Rabbi on matters of Jewish Medical Ethics. Rabbi Rapoport is the author of several books including the recently published “Judaism and Homosexuality: An Authentic Orthodox View”.
Professor Aviezer Ravitzky heads Hebrew University’s Jewish Philosophy department and is a Senior Fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute. He has also authored several books, including Messianism, Zionism and Jewish Religious Radicalism, History and Faith: Studies in Jewish Philosophy and Religious and Secular Jews in Israel: A post- Zionist. In 2001, Ravitzky was awarded the Israel Prize for his research in Jewish philosophy.
Sorin Rosen was selected by the Romanian Jewish Community Council and the Joint Distribution Committee to study for Smicha, and to assume the religious leadership of the entire Romanian Jewish Community. For the past three years he and his wife Livia have been living in Riverdale while Sorin has been studying at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah. They, with their daughter Shiri, and Livia’s mother Irina, will be returning to Romania this summer.
Dr. Tamar Ross is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at Bar Ilan University and teacher of Machshevet Yisrael at Midreshet Lindenbaum. She has a PhD from Hebrew University and has published widely in scholarly journals in Israel and around the world.
S
Dr. Nahum Sarna is Dora Golding Professor Emeritus of Bible in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University. He has a BA and MA from the University of London and ordination from Jews College, London. He has a PhD in Biblical Studies and Semitic Languages from Dropsie College. He is the author of over 100 scholarly articles and numerous books, including Understanding Genesis and most recently, Songs of the Heart: An Introduction to the Book of Psalms. He is teaching at Drisha this summer.
Professor Michael Segal
Dept. of Bible – The Hebrew University of Jerusalem , Israel
Research Center: Hebrew University Bible Project
Education:
1993, B.A., Yeshiva University (New York)
2004, Ph.D., Hebrew University
Research Interests: Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible; Early Biblical
Exegesis; Jewish Literature of the Second Temple Period; Biblical Literature of the Persian Period
Marc B. Shapiro holds the Weinberg Chair in Judaic Studies at the University of Scranton. A graduate of Brandeis and Harvard Universities, he is the author of Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy and The Limits of Orthodox Theology, both of which were National Jewish Book Award Finalists. He is also the author of Saul Lieberman and the Orthodox. His newest book, Studies in Maimonides and His Interpreters appeared in 2008.
Dr. Aharon Shemesh is Senior Lecturer in the Talmud Department at Bar-Ilan University and is co-director of the Shalom Hartman Institute Beit Midrash program. He has a PhD from Bar Ilan University and received ordination from Yeshivat Kerem. He served as Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat HaKibbutz HaDati in Ein Tzurim, and was Bnei Akiva Rabbi in England. Dr. Shemesh was guest lecturer at UC Berkeley, a research fellow at Harvard University. His areas of research are Tanaitic Literature and the development of midrash and halakha in the Judean Desert Dead Sea Scrolls.
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.
Rabbi Dr. Daniel Statman – is a widely published professor of philosophy at the University of Haifa. His interests are in ethics, moral psychology, philosophy of law, and Jewish philosophy. He has a B.A and Ph.D from Bar-Ilan University. His publications in English include: “Moral Dilemmas” Value Inquiry Book Series, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995. [Hebrew version: The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1991] and “Religion and Morality” Value Inquiry Book Series, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995 [Hebrew version: The Bialik Institute, Jerusalem 1993] (co-author) and many articles.
Dr. Devora Steinmetz is a senior faculty member at Yeshivat Hadar where she teaches Talmud and Midrash. She is the author of “From Father to Son: Kinship, Conflict, and Continuity in Genesis” and “Punishment and Freedom: The Rabbinic Construction of Criminal Law”. She has taught rabbinic literature at Drisha and the Jewish Theological Seminary. She was a visiting scholar at the Hebrew University’s Hevruta Program and the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Steinmetz is the founder of Beit Rabban, an innovative day school that is profiled in Daniel Pekarsky’s Vision at Work: The Theory and Practice of Beit Rabban. She serves as an educational leadership consultant to the Mandel Foundation.
Professor Suzanne Last Stone is professor of law at Cardozo Law School, Yeshiva University. Professor Stone graduated from Princeton summa cum laude. Before entering law school, she was a Danforth Fellow in Jewish history and classical religions at Yale University. She was writing and research editor of the Columbia Law Review and a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. She clerked for Judge John Minor Wisdom of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and was associated with the firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. She teaches procedure, federal courts, and law and religion; her primary area of scholarship is Jewish law.
T
Rabbi Joseph Telushkin (born 1948) is an American Modern Orthodox rabbi, lecturer, and author. Telushkin attended the Yeshivah of Flatbush, was ordained at Yeshiva University, and studied Jewish history at Columbia University. Telushkin serves as a rabbi for the Los Angeles-based Synagogue for the Performing Arts founded in 1972 by Rabbi Jerome Cutler. He is an associate of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. He is a former director of education at the Brandeis-Bardin Institute. Telushkin is also a Senior Associate with CLAL (The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership), and is a member of the board of directors of the Jewish Book Council. He was a major force behind 1996 Senate Resolution 151, establishing a “National Speak No Evil Day” in the United States.
Telushkin’s book, Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things to Know About the Jewish Religion, Its People and Its History, is one of the best-selling books on Judaism of the past two decades. The first volume of A Code of Jewish Ethics, entitled A Code of Jewish Ethics: You Shall be Holy, which Telushkin regards as his major life’s work, was published in 2006.
Telushkin tours the United States as a lecturer on Jewish topics. He lives in New York City with his wife Dvorah and their children, Benjamin, Shira, Naomi, and Rebecca.
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.
U
V
W
Rabbi Avraham Walfish, who holds a Ph.D. in rabbinic literature from the Hebrew University, will give an integrated series of talks related to his work on literary analysis of rabbinic literature. He seeks to ferret out underlying philosophical and spiritual ideas of Hazal by focusing on the literary forms embedded in their halakhic and aggadic works. He will explore three interrelated themes developed by Hazal in the course of tractate Kiddushin, in the Mishnah, Tosefta, and Talmud Bavli: the nature and purpose of the family; commitment to Torah and mitzvot; and struggling with the yetzer hara.
Rabbi Dov Weiss is Assistant Professor of Religion at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. A former instructor at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Northwestern University, he completed his PhD at the University of Chicago as a Martin Meyer Fellow in June, 2011. He specializes in the history of Jewish biblical interpretation, rabbinic literature, and Jewish thought. Weiss has published articles on Jewish philosophy and history in the Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception (de Gruyter, 2009) and has translated and annotated primary texts in Jew in the Modern World, ed. Paul Mendes-Flohr and Judah Reinharz (Oxford University Press, 2011). In spring 2012, he was an Alan M. Stroock Fellow at the Harvard University Center for Jewish Studies.
Susan Weiss is founder and executive director of The Center for Women’s Justice. Susan has been actively working to find solutions for the problems of Jewish women and divorce for over 20 years, first as a private attorney, then as the founder and director of Yad L’Isha from 1997-2004, and now as the founder and executive director of CWJ. Susan initiated the innovative tactic of filing damage cases against recalcitrant husbands in the Israeli civil courts, is an editor of The Law and its Decisor (a quarterly journal published by Bar Ilan University Law School), and has written extensively about Jewish women and divorce. Susan is an attorney with an MA in sociology and anthropology and is currently a doctoral student at Tel Aviv University.
Susan’s articles include:
“Sign at Your Own Risk: the “RCA” Prenuptial May Prejudice the Fairness of Your Future Divorce Settlement” in Cardozo Women’s Law Journal, Vol. 6, p. 49 (1999). “Israeli Divorce Law: The Mal-distribution of Power, its Abuses, and the Status of Jewish Women,” in MEN AND WOMEN: GENDER, JUDAISM AND DEMOCRACY, (Rachel Elior, ed., (2004).
Rabbi Jeremy Wieder is Joseph and Gwendolyn Straus Professor of Talmud at RIETS and Instructor of Bible at Yeshiva College of Yeshiva University. A doctoral candidate in Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University, Rabbi Wieder received a bachelors degree summa cum laude from Yeshiva College in 1991, a master’s degree in American Jewish History from Bernard Revel Graduate School, and rabbinic ordination at RIETS in 1994.
An active member of our Teaneck community, Rabbi Wieder also is our excellent shachrit lainer on most Shabatot at Davar.
Rabbi Yonatan Wolf has Rabbinic Ordination from Israel’s Chief Rabbinate, B.Ed, Herzog Teachers College; M.A. Public Policy and Administration, Ben Gurion University; IDF officer in the Battle of Jenin (2002). He will suggest an answer to these questions and will talk about the Zionist, social and educational missions of Torah in the Negev.
X
Y
Z
Rabbi Dr. Noam Zohar is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the Shalom Hartman Institute, where he is head of the department of bioethics. He is also Senior Lecturer at the Department of Jewish and General Philosophy at Bar Ilan University. He has published research papers in the field of moral and political philosophy, applied ethics and rabbinic literature. His book, Alternatives in Jewish Bioethics, was published by the State University of New York Press. He is co-editor of The Jewish Political Tradition. The first volume of this four part work, “Authority,” was published by Yale University Press in 2000. Volume 2, “Membership”, was published in 2003.