The Sh’ma Advisory Board meets every month or two by conference call. The primary role of the Advisory Board is to make suggestions about the editorial calendar, as well as help frame the individual issues—that is, to help the editor create the most interesting and thoughtful conversations each month. Our members include:
Yossi Abramowitz, founding CEO of Jewish Family & Life, lives on Kibbutz Ketura with his wife Susan Silverman and their five children. He is an activist, writer and social entrepreneur, and blogs on peoplehood.org.
Dr. Aryeh Cohen is Associate Professor of Rabbinic Literature at the American Jewish University (formerly University of Judaism). He has taught at Hebew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and Brandeis University. Dr. Cohen is the author of Rereading Talmud: Gender, Law and the Poetics of Sugyot (Scholars Press, 1998) and co-editor of Beginning/Again: Towards a Hermeneutics of Jewish Texts (Seven Bridges Press, 2002). He is also a member of the Sh’ma advisory board. Cohen is a popular lecturer on Talmud, on politics and on the contemporary Jewish scene. His writing on these topics and others has been published in Conservative Judasim, Sh’ma, The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, The Association of Jewish Studies Review, Tikkun, The Reconstructionist, Kerem, The Jewish Spectator, The Jewish Journal and elsewhere.
Dr. Charlotte Fonrobert is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Co-Director of the Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford University. Her books include Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender, Jewish Conceptions and Practice of Space, and The Cambridge Companion to Rabbinic Literature. She is the Coordinator of the Text and Culture Speaker Series at Stanford.
Dr. Neil Gillman has served the past several years as the Chair of the Sh’ma Advisory Committee. He is the author of several books and essays, including Sacred Fragments: Recovering Theology for the Modern Jew (winner of the 1991 National Jewish Book Award in Jewish Thought); Conservative Judaism: A New Century; The Way into Encountering God in Judaism; Gabriel Marcel on Religious Knowledge; The Death of Death: Resurrection and Immortality in Jewish Thought ; and The Jewish Approach to God: A Brief Introduction for Christians. His most recent book is Traces of God: Seeing God in Torah, History and Everyday Life. One of Dr. Gillman’s recent essays, an excursus on eschatology, appeared in Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary (ed. David Lieber, 2001).
He was a member of the Commission on the Philosophy of Conservative Judaism, which produced Emet Ve’Emunah, the first statement of principles for Conservative Judaism.
A popular speaker and teacher, Dr. Gillman has served as scholar-in-residence in many Conservative and Reform congregations. In the summer of 2002, Dr. Gillman taught two courses on the philosophies of Mordecai Kaplan and Abraham Joshua Heschel at the Russian State University of the Humanities in Moscow on behalf of Project Judaica. Dr. Gillman is the Aaron Rabinowitz and Simon H. Rifkind Professor of Jewish Philosophy at JTS.
Dr. Lisa Grant is an Associate Professor of Jewish Education on the New York campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. She holds a B.A. from the University of Michigan and an M.B.A. in public management from the University of Massachusetts. She earned her PhD in Jewish Education from the Jewish Theological Seminary in May, 2000. Her research and teaching interests include adult learning and religious development, teaching Bible to adults, and the place of Israel in American Jewish life.
Rabbi Richard Hirsh was the chair of the Reconstructionist Commission on the Role of the Rabbi, and the author of its report, “The Rabbi-Congregation Relationship: A Vision for the 21st Century.” His commentaries are featured in the new Reconstructionist Haggadah and High Holiday prayerbook, and he is also the author of A Guide to Jewish Practice: The Journey of Mourning and A Guide to Jewish Practice: Welcoming Children ( forthcoming ). His articles appear regularly in The Reconstructionist and Reconstructionism Today, as well as in many other Jewish and general publications.
Named to the 2009 Forward 50, Shawn Landres is described as “an essential thinker in explaining the new Jewish spirituality and culture.” He is the co-founder and CEO of Jumpstart (http://jewishjumpstart.org), an incubator, catalyst, think tank, and advocate for sustainable Jewish innovation. A 2009 Ariane de Rothschild Fellow and 2010 European Nahum Goldmann Fellow, Shawn chairs the Advisory Board of Jewish Mosaic: The National Jewish Center for Sexual & Gender Diversity, and serves on numerous other national and local advisory boards for Jewish and interreligious initiatives. A respected author and editor (including four books), and a popular lecturer both in the United States and abroad, he previously served as Director of Research for Synagogue 3000, where he managed the launch of the S3K Synagogue Studies Institute, launched the widely read S3K Reports series and Synablog, and conceived S3K’s Jewish Emergent Initiative. Shawn holds degrees in Religious Studies and Social Anthropology from Columbia University, UCSB, and the University of Oxford. Shawn and his wife Zuzana Riemer Landres live in Southern California with their 2 year-old daughter.
Dr. Julian Levinson is the Samuel Shetzer Professor of American Jewish Studies and Associate Professor of English at the University of Michigan. He has published articles on Jewish American literature, Yiddish poetry, Holocaust Literature and Film, and the role of Jewish Studies in the multicultural academy. His book, Exiles on Main Street: Jewish American Writers and American Literary Culture, is forthcoming from Indiana University Press.
Dr. Shaul Magid is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and the Jay and Jeannie Schottenstein Chair in Jewish Studies in Modern Judaism at Indiana University. His teaching focuses on Kabbala, Hasidism and medieval and modern Jewish philosophy. He is the editor of God’s Voice from the Void: Old and New Essays on Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (Suny Press, 2001), co-editor of Beginning Again: Toward a Hermeneutic of Jewish Texts (Seven Bridges Press, 2002) and author of Hasidism on the Margin: Reconciliation, Antinomianism, and Messianism in Izbica and Radzin Hasidism (University of Wisconsin Press, 2003). Shaul is the co-editor of the online Journal of Textual Reasoning and a member of the steering committee for the Study of Judaism for the American Academy of Religion. He is a member of the board of CHAI (The Children of Abraham Institute) dedicated to the pursuit of interfaith dialogue between Jews, Christians,and Muslims.
Noam Pianko is Samuel and Althea Stroum Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and International Studies in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. Noam’s scholarship explores the national question in modern Jewish thought in Europe, Palestine, and the United States.He recently published , Zionism and the Roads not Taken:Rawidowicz, Kaplan, Kohn (Indiana University Press 2010) and has contributed articles to Jewish Social Studies, American Jewish History, American Studies, and The Encyclopedia of Religion in America. Born in New York City, Noam now lives in Seattle with his wife Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum and two daughters, Yona and Mia. Noam’s blog at www.noampianko.com.
Josh Rolnick is a fiction writer whose short stories have won the Arts & Letters Fiction Prize and the Florida Review Editor’s Choice Prize. His fiction has also appeared in Western Humanities Review, Bellingham Review, and Gulf Coast . He is the former managing editor of Moment , a magazine of Jewish culture, politics, and religion, and founder of the journal’s short story contest. Rolnick is also the former editorial director of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, a magazine covering best strategies for nonprofits, foundations, and socially responsible businesses. He has reported for news organizations including the Associated Press , in Jerusalem and Trenton, N.J., and Congressional Quarterly in Washington, D.C . Rolnick is currently a director on the boards of trustees of the National Jewish Democratic Council, the Save a Child’s Heart Foundation, and the Lippman Kanfer Family Foundation. He is a member of Moment ’s editorial advisory board.
Rabbi Or Rose is Associate Dean and Director of Informal Education at the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College. He is the co-editor of Righteous Indignation: A Jewish Call for Justice and God in All Moments: Mystical & Practical Wisdom from the Hasidic Masters.
Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg is senior Jewish educator at Tufts Hillel and the author of Surprised by God: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Religion, which was nominated for the 2010 Sami Rohr Prize. She is editor of The Passionate Torah: Sex and Judaism and Yentl’s Revenge: The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism, and co-editor with Rabbi Elliot Dorff, of three books on Jewish ethics: Sex and Intimacy, War and National Security, and Social Justice. She lives in the Boston area with her husband and son.
Carol Brennglass Spinner is Chair of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture Board and Co-Founder of Avoda Arts. An accomplished businesswoman and committed Jewish community philanthropist, Carol serves on the boards of JESNA and the JCCA, as well as the Casden Center for the Study of Jews in Contemporary America at the University of Southern California. She is an active member of UJA-Federation of New York’s Commission on Jewish Identity and Renewal. She holds an M.S. in Educational Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. from Harvard University. She co-founded—with Nessa Rapoport and Tobi Kahn — Avoda: Objects of The Spirit, an innovative, arts-based learning program that engages students 16-24 in the study of Judaism, ethics and morals.
Devorah Zlochower is Rosh Beit Midrash at Drisha Institute where she teaches Talmud and halakhah in the full-time programs. Zlochower graduated Drisha Institute’s Scholars Circle, a three-year program in Talmud and halakha. She holds an MA in political science from Columbia University. She lives with her husband and two sons in Riverdale, New York.
