A retired business owner, FRED CLAAR is actively involved in Jewish education as a Board member, teacher, and lifelong learner. He is the co-author with Joyce, his wife of 58 years, of Values and Ethics: Torah Topics for Today a book that easily brings Judaism into family discussions.

As Chair of the Board of the Jim Joseph Foundation, ALISA DOCTOROFF guides the Foundation in their mission to provide compelling and effective learning experiences for young Jews. Alisa is a past president of UJA-Federation of New York, where she also served as Chair of the Board and Chair of the Commission on Jewish Identity and Renewal.

RABBI DAVID GEDZELMAN is President & CEO of The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life, which is dedicated to revitalizing Jewish identity through educational and cultural initiatives as well as to advocating for and supporting Hebrew and Jewish literacy among the general population.

RABBI LISA GOLDSTEIN is a teacher, coach, and consultant with almost 25 years of executive experience. She teaches a wide variety of online courses with an emphasis on spiritual resilience, meditation, and the teachings of R. Nahman of Breslov. Educated at Brown University and Hebrew Union College, Rabbi Goldstein has worked as the director of Hillel of San Diego, and the executive director of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality. She is a faculty member for Jewish Pedagogies for Well Being at M2, a research program for master educators, and is currently working for certification in NARM, a therapeutic approach to healing developmental trauma.

RABBI MATT GREEN is the Associate Rabbi of Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, where he is also the director of the Brooklyn Jews community. Matt was ordained from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York in 2018, the same year he was named one of the New York Jewish Week’s 36-Under-36 for his surprising experiments in building queer Jewish community.

After a career as an attorney and child advocate, ALISON KUR obtained a Masters degree from the Hornstein Program at Brandeis University and made the career change to Jewish education. She is the Executive Director of Jewish Living at Temple Beth Elohim in Wellesley, MA. Prior to TBE, Alison worked at Combined Jewish Philanthropies.

RABBI JESSICA MINNEN is a writer, ritualist, and liturgist committed to the discipline of delight. Inspired by user-centered design, she consults with organizations across the country to create, deliver, and scale transformative Jewish learning. She was a part of the founding team of OneTable, and served as Rabbi in Residence from 2014-2021. Originally from Paducah, Kentucky, Jessica is an alumna of Washington University in St. Louis, the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, Paideia: The European Institute for Jewish Studies in Sweden, Baltimore Hebrew University, and the Jewish Theological Seminary. She is also a Fellow of Rabbis Without Borders, Reboot, the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Women’s Leadership Mission, and the Ruskay Institute for Professional Leadership. Jessica lives in Denver, Colorado, and is mom to one amazing dog and one amazing human.

DR. JON LEVISOHN is the Mandel Associate Professor of Jewish Educational Thought at Brandeis University, where he also directs the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education. A philosopher of Jewish and general education, his recent publications include the edited volume Beyond Jewish Identity and two position papers for the Applied Research Collective on American Jewry at NYU: “A New Paradigm of Jewish Literacy” and “Producers Not Possessors.”

RABBI VANESSA OCHS, Ph.D., Professor in the University of Virginia Department of Religious Studies and a core member of the Jewish Studies Program since its inception, teaches such topics as Jewish feminism, Jewish weddings, the Passover Haggadah, spiritual writing, and ethnography.  She is Chair of the Professional Consulting Committee: UVA Chaplaincy Services and Pastoral Education at the UVA Health System. She has been a faculty member of the Bronfman Youth Fellowship.

Her books include The Passover Haggadah: A Biography (Princeton University Press, 2020),   Inventing Jewish Ritual (winner of a 2007 National Jewish Book Award), Sarah Laughed, The Jewish Dream Book (with Elizabeth Ochs), Words on Fire: One Woman’s Journey into the Sacred, and  Safe and Sound: Protecting Your Child In An Unpredictable World.  For her writing, she was awarded a Creative Writing Fellowship by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Currently a Ph.D. student in Jewish Thought at New York University, KYLIE UNELL is the founding Executive Director of Rooted, a project that provides young Jews with the community and content they need to live flourishing modern Jewish lives. She also runs Models of Faith, a Rooted photoblog devoted to showing the human side of faith through storytelling.