Dr. Jay R. Berkovitz is Professor of Jewish History at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he directs the Center for Jewish Studies. Also a specialist in Jewish law, he received his PhD at Brandeis University in Near Eastern and Judaic studies. He is author of The Shaping of Jewish Identity in Nineteenth-century France (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1989). Rites and Passages: The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Culture in France, 1650-1860 was published in 2004 by the University of Pennsylvania, and a Hebrew edition will be published by the Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History. His most recent work has focused on Jewish social history in the early modern period, with particular emphasis on communal governance, ritual, family, and the history of Jewish law. He has been awarded grants by the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Littauer Foundation, and fellowships at the Hebrew University, Harvard University, and the Institute for Advanced Studies, Jerusalem.
Dr. David Bernat received his PhD in biblical studies from Brandeis University and is Assistant Professor of Religion and Jewish Studies at Wellesley College. Dr. Bernat has taught for Me'ah since 1998 and has led Meah's Bible/Rabbinics summer Israel tours.
Dr. Avi Bernstein-Nahar is the Dean of Educational Planning and Development and Assistant Professor of Jewish Thought at Hebrew College. He has taught previously at Boston College, the University of Toronto and Rutgers University. His work has appeared in the Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, Journal of Jewish Education and the Jewish Book Annual. His research and writing focus on philosophy and education. Avi earned his PhD at Stanford University.
Reuven Cohn is an adult Jewish educator, and an attorney. He is a veteran teacher in the Me'ah program and also teaches for the Me'ah Graduate Institute, Hebrew College Online, and Maimonides School. He holds rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva University, a JD from Yale Law School, and has done advanced graduate work in Jewish studies at Harvard University. Among his areas of interest are Jewish interpretations of the Bible, the literary development of the Mishnah and Talmud, and history of the prayerbook.
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Dr. Alanna Cooper is a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Center for the Study of World Religions, where she is engaged in research on Jewish identity, Diaspora relationships, and the Jews of Eastern Lands (Edot HaMizrach). Alanna received her PhD in cultural anthropology from Boston University. Her dissertation, which is on the Bukharan Jews, traces the historical and contemporary relationship between this Central Asian Diaspora group and the wider Jewish world.
Jessica Fechtor is currently pursuing a PhD in the Near Eastern languages
and civilizations department at Harvard University, where she studies Hebrew
and Yiddish comparative literature and modern Jewish thought. She holds a
BA from Columbia University and a Master of Jewish Studies from Oxford
University.
Dr. Everett Fox is the Allen M. Glick Professor of Judaic and Biblical Studies at Clark University. He received his PhD from Brandeis University. Dr. Fox’s books include In the Beginning (New York: Schocken Books, 1983), Now These are the Names (New York: Schocken Books, 1986), Scripture and Translation (ed., with Lawrence Rosenwald, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), The Five Books of Moses (New York: Schocken Books, 1995), and Give Us a King! (Schocken Books, 1999).
Dr. Lynne Heller is a graduate of the Yeshivah of Flatbush and its Midrasha. Dr. Heller received a BA with honors in English and education from Brooklyn College (Scholars Program) and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She earned her MA and PhD degrees in English and comparative literature at New York University as a New York State Regents Doctoral Fellow and a National Defense Education Fellow. She has taught Bible in several of the adult learning programs of Hebrew College and CJP, including the Early Morning Text Study program, Genesis Bible study program, Ikkarim, Kol Isha, and the Institute for Jewish Studies in Lexington.
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David Jacobson is Associate Professor of Judaic Studies at Brown University in the Program in Judaic Studies/Department of Religious Studies. He has published widely and is author of Modern Midrash: The Retelling of Traditional Jewish Narratives by Twentieth-Century Hebrew Writers (State University of New York Press, 1987); Does David Still Play Before You?: Israeli Poetry and the Bible (Wayne State University Press, 1997). He is coeditor (with Kamal Abdel-Malek) of Israeli and Palestinian Identities in History and Literature (St. Martin's Press, 1999). He is currently writing a book on the relationship of contemporary Israeli poets to God and prayer.
Dr. Jane Kanarek is Assistant Professor of Rabbinics at Hebrew College, where she teaches Talmud and halakhah in the rabbinical school. An alumna of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship, she received a BA from Brown University, rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and a PhD from the University of Chicago. During the summer, she teaches and helps direct the Northwoods Kollel, a full-time Jewish learning program for college students at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin.
Dr. Jonathan Klawans is Associate Professor of Religion at Boston University, where he teaches courses in Western religion, Hebrew Bible, Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient Jewish history, and rabbinic literature. His book, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism (Oxford University Press), won awards as a best first book for the year 2000 from the American Academy of Religion and the American Academy for Jewish Research. He is currently writing a book exploring the religious significance of sacrifice in the Hebrew Bible and ancient Judaism.
Dr. Deeana Copeland Klepper holds a PhD in Medieval European History from Northwestern University and is currently Assistant Professor of Religion at Boston University where she teaches a variety of courses on the religious culture of the Middle Ages. She has published articles on late medieval Christian-Jewish relations, and is completing a book on polemics, interpretation, and Jewish texts in the middle ages.
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Dr. Shari Lowin is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Stonehill College. She holds a PhD from the University of Chicago. She has taught at University of Chicago, Yeshiva University, Brooklyn College, and in Ma’ayan. Shari is fluent in Arabic and has researched and published on a number of topics comparing Judaism and Islam, including her dissertation: The Making of a Forefather: Abraham in Islamic and Jewish Exegetical Narratives.
Dr. Maud Mandel is Associate Professor of Judaic Studies and History at Brown University. She holds a PhD from the University of Michigan, an AM from University of Michigan, and a BA from Oberlin College. Her current book project, Beyond Antisemitism: Muslims and Jews in Contemporary France, has been awarded an advance contract by Princeton University Press. Her most recent article, "Transnationalism and its Discontents during the 1948 Arab/Israeli War," recently appeared in the journal Diaspora. She teaches courses on many aspects of modern Jewish history, including history of the Holocaust, Zionism and the birth of the state of Israel, and history of American Jews.
Dr. Natan Margalit earned his PhD in Near Eastern studies from UC Berkeley. He studied for many years in Israel and received rabbinic ordination from Machon Harry Fischel (The Jerusalem Seminary) in 1990. He has served as Jewish Chaplain and Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion at Bard College, as well as Director of Education at Makor, a Jewish cultural and arts center in New York. He was a Rabbinic Fellow at CLAL and has taught at Machon Pardes and Yakar Learning Community in Jerusalem. He currently serves on the Ethics Committee and the Task Force on Ethical Kashrut for Ohalah, the association of Rabbis for Jewish Renewal. He has published articles on gender, textual practice, ecology and spirituality in numerous journals, and is currently preparing for publication of his book, Life Containing Texts: Gender and Writing in the Mishnah.
Dr. Jacob Meskin is Assistant Professor of Jewish Education at Hebrew College. He also helps train faculty for Me'ah. He has taught previously at Princeton University, Williams College and Rutgers University. He received his MA and PhD from Princeton University. His articles have appeared in Modern Judaism, The Journal of Religion, Soundings, Judaism, Cross Currents, and in several edited volumes. He is currently completing a manuscript on the relationship between philosophy and Jewish tradition in the work of Emmanuel Levinas.
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Elisha Russ-Fishbane is a PhD candidate in Jewish history and culture at Harvard University. He received his BA in classical studies from the University of Chicago. Mr. Russ-Fishbane has also studied at the Gregorian University in Rome, Italy, and at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin, Germany.
Rabbi Benjamin Samuels is the rabbi of Congregation Sha'arei Tefillah in Newton. He holds a BA in English literature and an MA in both Bible and medieval Jewish history from Yeshiva University.
Michael Satlow is Associate Professor at Brown University in the Program in Judaic Studies/Department of Religious Studies. He specializes in early Judaism, and is author of Jewish Marriage in Antiquity (Princeton, 2001) and Tasting the Dish: Rabbinic Rhetorics of Sexuality (Scholars Press, 1995). He is now working on a project on Jewish piety in antiquity, as well as continuing to develop an interactive database of inscriptions from the land of Israel that will be accessible over the Internet.
Dr. Solomon Schimmel, Professor of Jewish Education and Psychology, is the author of Wounds Not Healed by Time: The Power of Repentance and Forgiveness, and The Seven Deadly Sins: Jewish, Christian and Classical Reflections on Human Psychology, (both published by Oxford University Press), and numerous articles and book chapters on Jewish thought, psychology of religion, and Jewish education. He was a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar and Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University, England for six months in 1998. Dr. Schimmel received his BA from the City College of New York and MA and PhD from Wayne State University, and has been a National Science Foundation Research Fellow at Harvard University, and a Visiting Professor and/or Research Fellow at Brandeis University, University of Texas, Bar-Ilan University and Hebrew University.
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Rabbi Meir Sendor is spiritual leader of the Young Israel of Sharon. He holds rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva University and a doctorate in Medieval Jewish History from Harvard University. Rabbi Sendor lectures widely on Jewish history, philosophy, law and mysticism.
Dr. Harvey Shapiro is Associate Professor and former Dean of the Shoolman Graduate School of Jewish Education at Hebrew College. His areas of specialization are Jewish education, modern Hebrew literature, modern Jewish history and modern Jewish thought. His most recent articles include “Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhin’s Non-Messianic Vision of the Present and Future,” in The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy (2007) “Toward a Holistic Theory of Informal Jewish Education,” Journal of Jewish Education (2007), “Professional Leadership and the Future of the Synagogue,” in Zachary I. Heller, editor, Re-envisioning the Synagogue (National Center for Jewish Policy Studies and STAR—Synagogues: Transformation and Renewal, 2005). His PhD is from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion where he wrote his dissertation on “Cultivating a Viable Relationship Between North American Jews and Israel.” (1996).
Jeffrey Spitzer is the chair of the Rabbinic literature department at Gann Academy/New Jewish High School in Waltham. Spitzer is a graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary where he did doctoral work on the social history of the ancient synagogue. Spitzer was formerly the Senior Educator at Jewish Family & Life; he was the editor of the Jewish texts section of the acclaimed MyJewishLearning.com website (developed in conjuction with Hebrew College), and has contributed 50 articles to the site. Spitzer is also on the interdenominational editorial board of BabagaNewz, a Jewish values magazine for children in grades 4-7.
Dr. David Starr is Assistant Professor of Jewish History at Hebrew College and Dean of Me'ah. An expert on the subjects of modern Jewish history, Jewish education and adult Jewish learning in America, he has overseen a decade of Me'ah's national growth. Dr. Starr received his PhD from Columbia University and rabbinical ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary.
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