Mechon Hadar Guest

Rabbi Shai Held

Rabbi Shai Held is co-founder and rosh yeshiva at Mechon Hadar and chair in Jewish Thought. He served as scholar-in-residence at Kehilat Hadar, taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and is a Jacob Javits fellow in religion at Harvard University. A Wexner Graduate Fellow, Shai was director of education and conservative rabbinic advisor at Harvard Hillel. A graduate of Harvard, he has taught for institutions such as the Drisha Institute, Hebrew College, Meah, UJACJP, and the Rabbinic Training Institute.

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Avital Hochstein

Avital Campbell Hochstein is rosh yeshiva at Mechon Hadar and teaches Talmud at Yeshivat Hadar. She is the former rosh kollel at the Pardes Institute. A research fellow at Mechon Shalom Hartman, she has taught Talmud for several years at both institutions and was rosh beit midrash at the new Hartman High School for Girls. She is the co-author of The Place of Women in Midrash (Yedioth Ahronoth 2008). Avital is also a founder of Kehilat Shirah Hadashah in Jerusalem.

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Rabbi Elie Kaunfer

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

Click here to learn more about Empowered Judaism, Elie Kaunfer's forthcoming book.

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Rabbi Ethan Tucker

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.

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Dr. Devora Steinmetz

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.


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Rabbi Jeffrey Fox

Rabbi Jeffrey S. Fox is a faculty member at Yeshivat Hadar.  He teaches chumash and Rashi as well as oversees the Berrie Innovation Grant. Rabbi Fox was the first graduate of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah. After ordination he served as the spiritual leader of Kehilat Kesher: The Community Synagogue of Tenafly and Englewood, where he grew the shul from thirty to one hundred families. In addition to teaching at the Drisha Institute and directing the Florence Melton Adult Mini School in Westchester County, he is a rabbinic fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute of Jerusalem and has served on boards of the UJA-Federation of Northern New Jersey as well as J-ADD.  He lives in Riverdale with his wife Beth and their four children.

Miriam-Simma Walfish

Miriam-Simma Walfish is the sho'elet u'meishiva (a resource during Talmud study) and coordinates Yeshivat Hadar's group processing. She is a graduate of the Pardes Educators Program, where she studied in the Pardes Kollel and through which she received an MA in Jewish Education from Hebrew University. She also studied at the Drisha Institute for Jewish Education and at Midreshet Ein haNatziv. She has taught Tanakh and Talmud and the Heschel High School in New York City, as well as at the Northwoods Kollel and Beit Midrash of Ramah Wisconsin and the National Havurah Institute.
 

Jason Rubenstein

Jason Rubenstein is a faculty member at Yeshivat Hadar, where he teaches Mussar  (ethics). He is a fourth-year rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary and holds an MA in Talmud from JTS and an AB in Social Studies from Harvard College. For the past two summers, Jason has coordinated Yeshivat Hadar's group processing and worked as sho'el umeshiv (a resource during Talmud study). An alumnus of Yeshivat Ma'ale Gilbo'a, Jason has led several trips for the Nesiya Institute.

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Joey Weisenberg

Joey Weisenberg is a faculty member at Yeshivat Hadar in charge of all musical programming. He is a mandolinist/guitarist and currently performs with bands including Romashka, The Amazing Frozen String Quartet, others including his own ensembles. Joey also works as the Musical Director at the Kane Street Synagogue. As a teacher, Joey leads his “Spontaneous Jewish Choir” workshops, teaches for institutions including Klez Kanada and the Jewish Theological Seminary, and teaches private instrumental lessons to a variety of students.

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Rabbi Miles Cohen

Rabbi Miles Cohen is a faculty member at Mechon Hadar, where he teaches Basic Torah Reading at Yeshivat Hadar.  He is also senior lecturer of Professional and Pastoral Skills at The Jewish Theological Seminary. Rabbi Cohen teaches synagogue skills, such as chanting the Torah, Megillot, and prayers of the weekday, Shabbat, holiday services, and special life-cycle occasions. He has been teaching these skills to JTS rabbinical students and education students for over ten years. He also specializes in Hebrew grammar, which he teaches in both the Hebrew Language and Bible Departments, and in Masoretic studies.

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Rabbi Dianne Cohler-Esses

Rabbi Dianne Cohler-Esses is a faculty member at Mechon Hadar. She most recently served as a scholar-in-residence at UJA-Federation. She also writes about Torah and Jewish ethnicity for several anthologies and scholarly journals and for the New York Jewish Week. Before coming to UJA-Federation, Rabbi Cohler-Esses taught and consulted widely in the Jewish world in such organizations as Ma'ayan, Jewish Life Network, and The Curriculum Initiative, and served on the faculties of the Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning, the Hebrew Union College Kollel, and the Edgar M. Bronfman Youth Fellowships in Israel (BYFI). She became co-director of BFYI in 1998, and served in a variety of capacities until 2005. Rabbi Cohler-Esses previously received a fellowship from CLAL—The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership to study with Yitz Greenberg and to teach for CLAL. She subsequently joined their faculty, teaching in pluralist settings, while pursuing advanced study of Midrash at the Jewish Theological Seminary. She received ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1995 and is the first woman from the Syrian Jewish community to become a rabbi, as well as the first — and currently the only — person from her community to become a non-Orthodox rabbi.

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Rachel Friedrichs

Rachel Friedrichs is a faculty membet at Mechon Hadar, where she teaches Tanakh at Yeshivat Hadar, with a focus on medieval commentaries. She teaches Tanakh and Jewish Thought in Jerusalem for Young Judaea and Siach - both pluralist, co-ed, gap year programs. She recently completed the Pardes Educators Program, simultaneously earning her MA in Jewish Education at Hebrew University, and has a BA from Brandeis University with a concentration in Intellectual History. Rachel also spent time studying at Midreshet Moriah in Jerusalem, and at NYU’s campus in the Czech Republic. Upon her graduation from Brandeis, Rachel participated in the Jewish Teacher Corps, a program that placed her in Phoenix, AZ to teach and mentor at the Jess Schwartz Community High School; before moving to Israel she also taught at a Solomon Schechter school in New York.  She has also led beit midrash programs at Brandeis, worked as a teacher at Camp Ramah, and taught occasionally for Kehilat Hadar.

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David Goshen

David Goshen is a faculty member at Mechon Hadar.  A graduate of the Har Etzion and Mir Yeshivot, he has studied Philosophy and Religion at the Hebrew University. He taught at the ‘Havruta’ Beit Midrash program at Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University.

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Rabbi James Jacobson-Maisels

Rabbi James Jacobson-Maisels is a faculty member at Mechon Hadar and teaches Kabbalah and an elective on spritual practices at Yeshivat Hadar. He teaches Jewish thought and mysticism at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. James holds a BA in Philosophy and Judaic Studies from Brown University and an M.St. in Modern Jewish Studies from Balliol College the University of Oxford. He studied at the Conservative Yeshivah, the Hartman Institute of Jewish Studies, and in the Advanced Learning Seminar at Pardes and received rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Daniel Landes in Jerusalem. He is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Chicago in Jewish Studies specializing in Jewish mysticism. He has taught in a variety of settings in America and Israel on Judaism and Jewish Mysticism. He hopes to integrate his study and practice and to help teach and live Judaism as a spiritual discipline.

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Rabbi Amy Kalmanofsky

Rabbi Amy Kalmanofsky is a faculty member at Mechon Hadar. She graduated from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and received her PhD in Bible and Ancient Semitic Languages at the Jewish Theological Seminary where she is currently an assistant professor. Her research interests include feminist and literary criticism of the Bible and biblical theology. She is a contributor to the forthcoming Women's Torah Commentary. Her articles "Their Heart Cried Out to God:Gender and Prayer in the Book of Lamentations" and "Horror and Childbirth in the Biblical Prophets" will appear, respectively, in the volume A Question of Sex:  Gender and Difference in the Hebrew Bible and the Journal of Biblicaln Interpretation. She is finishing her book Terror All Around:  The Rhetoric of Horror in the Book of Jeremiah to be published by T&T Clark/Continuum. Last year, she received the List College Teacher of the Year award.  Amy teaches Bible at Yeshivat Hadar.

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Amanda Pogany

Amanda Pogany is the fellows' project coordinator at Yeshivat Hadar. She teaches 8th grade Judaic Studies and Hebrew language at the Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan where she is also the middle school student life coordinator. A trained mentor through the Jewish New Teacher Project, Amanda mentors for the Davidson School at JTS, the Pardes Educators program, and the Solomon Schechter School of Manhattan. Amanda is a graduate of the Pardes Educators Program, has a Masters in Jewish Education from Hebrew University and a BA from Barnard College. She is co-founder of Altshul, an independent egalitarian minyan in Brooklyn.  She lives in Brooklyn with her husband Aaron Bisman and their son Asher.

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Rabbi Micha'el Rosenberg

Rabbi Micha'el Rosenberg is a faculty member at Mechon Hadar and teaches Tanakh at Yeshivat Hadar. He is the rabbi of the Fort Tryon Jewish Center, an independent egalitarian synagogue in the Washington Heights section of New York City. An alumnus of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship program, he received his rabbinical ordination from the Chief Rabbinate of Israel following his studies in the kollel halakhah at Yeshivat Ma’aleh Gilboa and is currently a doctoral candidate in Talmud and Rabbinic Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary. He has taught Bible, Talmud, and halakhah in a wide variety of settings, including the Drisha Institute for Jewish Education, JTS, the National Havurah Institute, and the Northwoods Kollel and Beit Midrash of Ramah Wisconsin.

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Rabbi Ben Skydell

Rabbi Ben Skydell is a faculty member at Mechon Hadar and teaches Hasidut.  He also teaches Talmud and Chumash and is the Director of Religious Guidance at North Shoren Hebrew Academy. He has ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary.

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Mishael Zion

Mishael Zion is a faculty member at Mechon Hadar.  He is also a Faculty Fellow at the Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning in New York and a student at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School. Mishael was born and raised in Jerusalem, where he served on the faculty of the Shalom Hartman Institute and the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies. He is co-author of A Night to Remember: The Haggadah of Contemporary Voices (2007).

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