Guests

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Dr. Anastasia Badder

Anastasia joined the University of Cambridge in 2022 as a Research Associate in the Faculty of Divinity and Cambridge Interfaith Programme.  

Prior to Cambridge, Anastasia completed a postdoc at the University of Luxembourg. She holds a PhD in Educational Sciences from the University of Luxembourg, an MA in Anthropology from the University of Auckland, and a BA in Anthropology from Barnard College.  

Anastasia's interdisciplinary research ethnographically explores articulations of language and/as materiality in interreligous relations and encounters in Europe.

https://www.divinity.cam.ac.uk/staff/dr-anastasia-badder

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Dr. Galeet Dardashti

https://www.galeetdardashti.com/

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Dr. Jenny Small

Dr. Jenny L. Small is the associate director of the MCSJE. She is a scholarly expert on college students' religious identities, and she developed Critical Religious Pluralism Theory to address issues of religious privilege and marginalization in higher education and American society. Jenny has previously taught at Salem State University and Boston College, consulted with Hillel International, and served as the associate director for education and content at Convergence on Campus, a non-profit organization with the mission of making colleges and universities more equitable for students from all religious, secular, and spiritual backgrounds. 

https://www.brandeis.edu/mandel/about/faculty-staff/bios/small.html

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Dr. Tali Zelkowicz

Dr. Tali Zelkowicz is the director of curriculum and research at The Wexner Foundation where she works across Wexner’s lay and professional and Israeli programs to help deepen and expand the teaching and learning of leadership. An educator, rabbi, and sociologist of education, Dr. Zelkowicz has taught graduate courses at HUC-JIR Los Angeles, and before coming to TWF, served as head of school at Columbus Jewish Day School. She is an alumna of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship, was the founding director of the MCSJE Senior Fellows Program, in which she also participated as an inaugural senior fellow, and serves on the advisory board of the Collaborative for Applied Studies in Jewish Education (CASJE), and on the board of Jewish Family Services of Columbus. A core lens of her leadership, teaching, and writing, Dr. Zelkowicz strives to help Jewish communal leaders and their communities face and embrace the critical role of productive tension in Jewish learning.

https://www.wexnerfoundation.org/team/dr-tali-zelkowicz/

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Eva Heinstein

https://mandelinstitute.org/about-us/staff/

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Laura Mandel

https://jewisharts.org/curator/laura-mandel/

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Professor Barry Wimpfheimer

https://religious-studies.northwestern.edu/people/faculty/tenure-track-faculty/barry-wimpfheimer.html

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Professor Jon Levisohn

https://www.brandeis.edu/mandel/about/faculty-staff/bios/levisohn.html

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Professor Jonathan Krasner

https://www.brandeis.edu/mandel/about/faculty-staff/bios/krasner.html

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Professor Julia Watts Belser

Julia Watts Belser is Professor of Jewish Studies in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, as well as core faculty in Georgetown’s Disability Studies Program and a Senior Research Fellow at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs. Her research centers on gender, sexuality, and disability in rabbinic literature, as well as queer feminist Jewish ethics and theology. She directs Disability and Climate Change: A Public Archive Project, an initiative that an initiative that documents the wisdom and insights of disabled activists, artists, and first responders on the frontlines of climate crisis.

https://gufaculty360.georgetown.edu/s/contact/00336000014TWyHAAW/julia-watts-belser
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Professor Mara Benjamin

Mara Benjamin’s research interests center on Jewish ideas and practices in the modern period. Benjamin joined the faculty of Mount Holyoke College in 2017. Previously, she served on the faculty position at St. Olaf College, was the Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University, and held the Hazel D. Cole Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Washington.

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/directory/faculty-staff/mara-benjamin
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Professor Yonatan Brafman

Yonatan Y. Brafman is assistant professor of Modern Judaism in the Department of Religion, with a secondary appointment in the Department of Literary and Cultural Studies, as well as a member of the Program in Judaic Studies at Tufts University. He is also an affiliated scholar at the Brodie Center for Jewish and Israeli Law at Yale Law School.

https://as.tufts.edu/religion/people/faculty/yonatan-brafman
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Professor Ziva Hassenfeld

https://www.brandeis.edu/mandel/about/faculty-staff/bios/hassenfeld.html

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Rabbi Shai Held

Rabbi Shai Held-- philosopher, theologian, and Bible scholar-- is President and Dean at the Hadar Institute.  He received the prestigious Covenant Award for Excellence in Jewish Education, and has been named multiple times by Newsweek as one of the fifty most influential rabbis in America and by the Jewish Daily Forward as one of the fifty most prominent Jews in the world. Rabbi Held is the author of Abraham Joshua Heschel: The Call of Transcendence (2013), The Heart of Torah (2017), and Judaism is About Love (2024) and he is the host of Hadar's newest podcast, Answers WithHeld.

https://www.hadar.org/about/people/rabbi-shai-held