In this section:
Faculty
Theodore Sasson
Ted Sasson is a faculty member at the Mandel Institute for Nonprofit Leadership and a consultant to the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation. Ted also serves as professor and Director of Jewish Studies at Middlebury College and Ruderman Scholar in Residence at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. Ted is the author of The New American Zionism (NYU Press, 2014) and several previous books, as well as dozens of scholarly articles and research monographs in the fields of diaspora studies, Israel studies, heritage tourism, demography, and the sociology of crime and punishment. His short essays have been published in the Jewish Review of Books, Tablet Magazine, The Forward, The Jerusalem Post, and other periodicals. He is author most recently of review essays on Israeli perspectives on American Jewry, and Israeli perspectives on civil rights, democracy and Arab-Jewish relations. In the past, Professor Sasson served as Director of Programs of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation; founding director of the Mandel Institute for Nonprofit Leadership; and Senior Scientist at Brandeis University’s Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, where he also held the title of Research Professor in the Sociology Department. He also served as chair of the social science division of the Association for Jewish Studies and on the boards of the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry and the Association for Israel Studies. He earned his B.A. at Brandeis University and his Ph.D. in sociology at Boston College.
Deborah Ancona
Deborah Ancona is the Seley Distinguished Professor of Management, a Professor of Organization Studies, and the Founder of the MIT Leadership Center at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Her pioneering research into how successful teams operate has highlighted the critical importance of managing outside, as well as inside, the team’s boundary. Ancona’s work also focuses on the concept of distributed leadership and on the development of research-based tools, practices, and teaching/coaching models that enable organizations to foster creative leadership at every level. She is the author, most recently, of the book, X-Teams: How to Build Teams That Lead, Innovate, and Succeed (Harvard Business School Press) and the related articles, “In Praise of the Incomplete Leader” and “Nimble Leadership: Walking the Line Between Creativity and Chaos” (Harvard Business Review). Ancona has served as a consultant on leadership and innovation to companies such as Bristol-Myers Squibb, Bose, Takeda, Li & Fung, OCP, Accenture, ASA and has served on the Board of the Penn Graduate School of Education and a working group of the Canadian Council of Academies. Ancona holds a BA and an MS in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and a PhD in management from Columbia University.
Mara Benjamin
Mara Benjamin is Irene Kaplan Leiwant Associate Professor of Jewish Studies at Mt. Holyoke College. She is the author of Rosenzweig’s Bible: Reinventing Scripture for Jewish Modernity (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and is a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities for her most recent book, The Obligated Self: Maternal Subjectivity and Jewish Thought (Indiana University Press, 2018). She lives with her wife and two children in Northampton, MA.
Dan Judson
Rabbi Judson is Provost of Hebrew College. Previously, he served as dean of the Rabbinical School from 2018 to 2023. Prior to his appointment as dean, he oversaw the professional development program, and served as the placement director for the Rabbinical School. He received his doctorate in Jewish history from Brandeis University where his research focused on the history of American synagogue finances. His book, Pennies for Heaven: A History of American Synagogues and Money, was published in 2018. Dan served on the national faculty of the Union for Reform Judaism, consulting to synagogues across the country on financial matters. His research on synagogues which have eliminated dues was featured in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, NPR, The New York Jewish Week, and Reform Judaism Magazine. He was also the Rabbi of Temple Beth David in Canton, MA for 10 years and co-authored a number of books on Jewish rituals for Jewish Lights Publishing, including: The Rituals and Practices of a Jewish Life: A Handbook for Personal Spiritual Renewal and The Jewish Pregnancy Book: A Resource for the Soul, Body and Mind During Pregnancy, Birth and the First Three Months.
Devora Steinmetz
Faculty for the Mandel Institute for Nonprofit Leadership and the Hebrew College rabbinical school. Devora is the founder of Beit Rabban, a Jewish day school profiled in Daniel Pekarsky’s Vision at Work: The Theory and Practice of Beit Rabban. She is the author of scholarly articles on Talmud, Midrash, and Bible as well as of two books, From Father to Son: Kinship, Conflict, and Continuity in Genesis and Punishment and Freedom: The Rabbinic Construction of Criminal Law. Devora has served on the faculty of Drisha, the Jewish Theological Seminary, Yeshivat Hadar, and Havruta: a Beit Midrash at Hebrew University.
David Stolow
David Stolow is the Co-Faculty Director of the Social Impact MBA Program at Boston University Questrom School of Business. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in Nonprofit Management and Social Enterprise and advises the 150+ MBA students who focus their graduate studies on issues of social impact. Professor Stolow previously served 10 years as Director of Strategic Development at Citizen Schools, a national nonprofit network of extended-day and after-school programs. Previously, Professor Stolow worked as the Chief Financial Officer for Boston Community Capital and for City Year. He has served in on the boards of several organizations and has conducted numerous workshops on financial oversight for board members. Professor Stolow graduated summa cum laude from Yale University and holds a Master’s Degree in Public and Private Management from the Yale School of Management.
Advisors
Naomi Adler
Naomi Adler is the former CEO of Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America. Previously, she served as CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia. In 2019, she served as co-chair of the JPRO National Conference and was honored with the Shimon Peres Leadership Award by Israel Bonds. Adler is also a member of the Jewish Agency for Israel’s Board of Governors, Forum of Executive Women and serves on the Advisory Board of Vision 2020, which celebrates women’s leadership nationwide. Prior to this position, Adler served as President and CEO of two different United Way organizations in New York for 14 years. Hailing from Rochester, NY, Naomi graduated Mount Holyoke College and SUNY Buffalo School of Law before returning to her hometown to work in private practice and then as an Assistant District Attorney for Monroe County. Her reputation as a successful prosecutor in cases of violence against women and children, and later as a community advocate for families living in poverty, have earned Adler a number of honors, including national recognition at the State of the Union address to Congress in 2013. She is proud of her three (baseball fanatic) sons and her husband, Rabbi Brian Beal.
Robin Bernstein
Robin Bernstein is currently working as a consultant for a number of CEO’s in the not for profit sector. After serving as the CEO of the Educational Alliance for 15 years, where she worked a total of 26 years in a number of different senior management positions. She has consulted on a number of projects in Africa, and served as the Interim CEO of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality and Friends of the Children New York. She also consulted for the Yale Center for Social and Emotional Intelligence. Robin is a clinical social worker and a certified meditation teacher. She is currently teaching meditation at Bard College. She is also on the faculty of the Garrison Institute’s Center for Contemplative Based Resiliency Training where she is training humanitarian aid workers suffering from vicarioius trauma as well as other front line social service providers. Early in her career she was a social worker both in private practice and at Jewish Family and Community Services in Chicago.
Jeremy Burton
Jeremy Burton joined the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston (JCRC) as Executive Director in October 2011, after playing leadership roles in many Jewish organizations as well as government and political campaigns. Under Jeremy’s leadership, JCRC has thrived as a national model for community relations, with a core mission of building a network of Jewish organizations that is a leader in the public square, connected through enduring partnerships beyond our community in service to Jewish concerns and the collective good. Under his leadership, JCRC spearheaded a Jewish communal response to stand with our immigrant neighbors in the face of detention and deportation by creating a robust interfaith network to provide sanctuary, court accompaniment, pro bono legal assistance and bond funds to targeted immigrants. His vision for American engagement with and support for grassroots civil society activists laid the foundation for JCRC and CJP’s joint initiative, Boston Partners for Peace, an innovative model to promote the work of shared-society organizations in Israel and the Palestinian Areas and connect them with the Boston community. Jeremy is a national thought leader, writing and speaking widely about the challenges and opportunities facing the Jewish community. As a Gay and Mexican-American Jew, he brings a unique and valuable perspective to the issue of inclusion across the diversity of our Jewish community. He has been published in the Boston Globe, JTA, Times of Israel, New York Jewish Week, Forward, Jerusalem Post, and the Washington Post. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency has included his account, @BurtonJM, in their “Twitter 100” list of the most influential Jewish voices on Twitter. Previously Jeremy was the Senior Vice President of Programs at the Jewish Funds for Justice, and Vice President of Programs at the Jewish Funders Network. Jeremy came to the Jewish community from a career in political strategy and public communications, having worked for New York Mayor David N. Dinkins, Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger, the 1996 Clinton/Gore Re-Election Campaign, and the New York State legislature & Attorney General, among others. Jeremy has served on several boards and in many volunteer leadership roles, including as a founding board member and then co-chair of Darkhei Noam, the first ‘partnership’ minyan in the United States, in New York City. He was a founding board member of Bikkurim, an incubator for new Jewish ideas that is now part of UpStart, and a founding national board member of Keshet, working for the full inclusion of all LGBTQ Jews in Jewish life.
Cindy Chazan
Cindy Chazan retired in December 2017 after 18 plus years with The Wexner Foundation where she served most recently as Senior Advisor. As Vice President for the Foundation, she facilitated collaborations among the Wexner Leadership constituencies in North America and in Israel, developed Partnership Communities for the Wexner Heritage Program and engaged Jewish communities in greater leadership development activities. Prior to her work for the Foundation, she was the Executive Director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford — the first woman to hold such a position in a large or large/intermediate community. Before that, Cindy was Special Projects Associate for the Jewish Community Centers Association of North America (then the Jewish Welfare Board) where she staffed the Mandel Commission on Maximizing Jewish Educational Effectiveness of JCC’s. Ms. Chazan was the Director of the Koffler Centre of the Arts in Toronto and the Associate Director of The Saidye Bronfman Centre in Montreal, both branches of the JCC. Cindy is a founding Board Member of Advancing Women Professionals and the Jewish Community.
Serena Eisenberg
Rabbi Serena Eisenberg is the Director of Regional Engagement at American Jewish Committee (AJC), following five years as the Director of AJC’s Northern California region. She served as the President of the Northern California Board of Rabbis and worked for Jewish congregations and organizations in the Bay Area for over 25 years. Previously Eisenberg was the Executive Director of Hillels at Stanford University and Brown University. She is a member of both the Reform and Reconstructionist Rabbinical Assemblies and is an alumnus of several fellowships, including Wexner Graduate Fellowship, Mandel Jerusalem Fellows, CLAL Rabbis without Borders, the Institute for Jewish Spirituality, Chautauqua Interfaith Clergy, and AJWS Global Justice Rabbis. She now serves as a trainer and mentor for the Clergy Leadership Incubator. Before entering the rabbinate, she received a JD/MSW from UC Berkeley and a B.A. from Brown University and worked for a decade as child-welfare advocate in the Bronx, Oakland, and in West Africa. Serena is married and blessed with five sons and several adorable grandchildren.
Allan Finkelstein
Allan Finkelstein retired in 2015 after 20+ years as President and CEO of the Jewish Community Centers of North America, the continental leadership organization for JCCs and camps in 140 cities. Allan came to his position following 25 years in the field in a variety of positions including CEO of JCCs in Columbus Ohio and Los Angeles. Allan worked as a consultant to some of the largest JCCs in North America, focusing on executive leadership, board development, organizational visioning , professional training, and overall management. During his tenure, the organization grew from a small consulting organization, to creating signature programs for constituents, along with a sophisticated benchmarking program that articulated and measured excellence in both business and mission for non profits. He is known as a mentor and coach to many of the leading executives who serve today. He has a passion for engagement with executives in leadership challenges,, lay/staff relationships, professional growth, and organizational leadership and strategy. Allan was the 2016 recipient of the Florence G. Heller Award for Distinguished Professional Service to the Jewish Community Center Movement Allan is a mentor in the Mandel Executive Leadership Program. He taught leadership and organizational development at the Zelikow School of Non Profit Management in Los Angeles, and was the 2016 Louis Bernstein Scholar in Residence. He has also taught at the Hornstein Program at Brandeis University. Allan’s avocation is musical conducting. He currently serves as resident musical director of Gallery Players in Columbus and has served as a synagogue choir director for many years.
Alan Gill
Alan Gill served as CEO of JDC from 2013-2017 before retiring from full-time service and returning home to Israel, capping a 24-year tenure with the organization. Alan played a leadership role in launching many of JDC’s landmark programs around the world including PACT – Parents and Children Together, an internationally recognized program for the education and cultural integration of Ethiopian-Israeli preschool children and their parents. Alan also served as a member of JDC’s emergency rescue and relief team during the 2008 Russia-Georgia war, providing urgently needed assistance to Jews trapped behind the Russian lines. In 2015, he oversaw JDC’s rescue operation of 130 Jews trapped in the war zone in eastern Ukraine and who were brought to safety in the western part of the country. During his tenure as JDC’s founding executive director of international development (1993-2012), JDC’s annual philanthropic revenue increased ten-fold bringing the annual budget to over $350 million. Before moving to Israel, Alan served as CEO of the Jewish Federation of Columbus (1984-1993). He holds a bachelor degree from Ohio University and a master degree from The Ohio State University where he was elected to its College of Social Work’s Hall of Fame in 2014 for outstanding career achievement. Alan is a past recipient of JPRO’s Mandelkorn Distinguished Service Award for an Exemplary Career in Service of the Jewish People. In addition to serving as CEO Emeritus of JDC, Alan is mentor in-residence with the Mandel Institute for Executive Leadership in North America and serves as senior advisor at the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values. He sits on the Boards of Directors of the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Israel and the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Jaffa.
Stephen H. Hoffman
Stephen H. Hoffman is President Emeritus of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, having led the organization from 1983-2018. His career at the Federation began in 1974. For three years, 2001-2004, he was “loaned” by Cleveland to serve as the President and CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, the national umbrella organization of the federation movement. He is a graduate of Dickinson College and received his Master’s of Social Work from the University of Maryland and a Master’s in Jewish Studies from the Baltimore Hebrew University. Steve currently serves on the boards of the Musical Arts Association (the Cleveland Orchestra), United Way of Cleveland, and the Jewish People Policy Institute (in Jerusalem). He is a cofounder and former co-chair of the Secure Community Network, a national organization concerned with communal security issues and preparedness for the Jewish community. He currently serves as the chairman of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation. Steve was the 1999 recipient of the Charles Eisenman Award, the Federation’s highest honor and received a Doctor of Humane Letters from the Baltimore Hebrew University in 2002.
Asher Lopatin
Rabbi Asher Lopatin is the Executive Director of Detroit’s JCRC/AJC: A Partnership for Community Relations and Jewish advocacy. He is also the rabbi of Congregation Kehillat Etz Chayim, and the President and Director of the Detroit National Center for Civil Discourse. He most recently served as President of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School, an Orthodox rabbinical school that teaches an inclusive, open and welcoming Torah. Previously, he was the spiritual leader of Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel Congregation, a modern Orthodox synagogue in Chicago, for 18 years. He received his rabbinic ordination from Rav Ahron Soloveichik and Yeshivas Brisk in Chicago, and from Yeshiva University, as a Wexner Graduate Fellow. A Rhodes Scholar with a M.Phil. in Medieval Arabic Thought from Oxford University, Rabbi Lopatin is the author of numerous scholarly and popular articles.
John Ruskay
John Ruskay is Executive Vice President Emeritus of UJA-Federation of New York and a Senior Fellow at the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute in Jerusalem. Now in his fourth decade of leadership in the North American Jewish community, Dr. Ruskay was a senior professional at NY UJA-Federation from 1993-2014, the last l5 as EVP and CEO. Prior to coming to UJA-Federation in l993, John was Vice Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary (1985-1993); Education Director of the 92cd Street Y (1979-1985). John earned his PH D in Political Science from Columbia University specializing in the Politics of the middle East. John has received numerous honors including honorary degrees from YU, JTS, HUC and the RRC. In May 2016, President Barack Obama appointed Dr. Ruskay to a two-year term on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). Dr. Ruskay has written extensively and speaks nationally on how the American Jewish community can most effectively respond to the challenge and opportunities of living an open society, Israel Education, and the central role of community. Dr. Ruskay lives in New York with his wife Robin Bernstein. They have five children and nine grandchildren