Rabbi Avi Weinstein, Executive Director Emeritus, has been associated with The Bronfman Fellowship since its inception in 1987, and is presently Head of Jewish Studies at the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy in Overland Park, KS.
Rabbi Shimon Felix is the Executive Director Emeritus of the program. He was born in New York, and has lived in Jerusalem since 1973. Rabbi Felix has been associated with The Bronfman Fellowship since 1991. He received his rabbinic ordination from Yeshivat Hamivtar, where he served as educational director. Rabbi Felix has worked in a Continue Reading »
Rabbi Michael Paley was the Bronfman Fellowship’s Founding Director, and is presently the Pearl and Ira Meyer Scholar in Residence at the Jewish Resource Center of UJA-Federation of New York. He also teaches at the Columbia School of Journalism, City College, and the Ivry Prozdor High School of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Newsweek magazine Continue Reading »
Rabbi James Ponet is the Jewish Chaplain at Yale University and Director of the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale.
Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum (Fellow 1993, Faculty 2003, 2004) is the Rabbi and Executive Director of the Kavana Cooperative, an independent Jewish community in Seattle. This will be Rachel’s third summer on faculty. Rachel was recently named to Newsweek Magazine’s list of “America’s Top 50 Influential Rabbis.” In addition, she has been a recipient of the prestigious AVI CHAI Continue Reading »
Yehuda Kurtzer is President of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. He was Visiting Assistant Professor and the inaugural Chair of Jewish Communal Innovation at Brandeis University, where he taught courses in Jewish Studies for the Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership and DeLeT programs.
Ilana Kurshan (BYFI ’95) is an alumna of the program. Ilana graduated from Harvard. After college, she spent a year in England studying British Romantic poetry at Cambridge and has been working in book publishing for the last eight years, first at Random House in New York. Ilana moved to Israel and began her current Continue Reading »
Rabbi Claudia Kreiman was born and raised in Santiago de Chile. After spending many years in Israel, during which she received her ordination from Machon Shechter, the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical School, and served as the Rabbi of Camp Ramah Noam in Israel, she now lives in Boston, and is the Associate Rabbi at Temple Beth Continue Reading »
Dr. Jelen, a 1987 Bronfman Fellow, is an assistant professor of English and Jewish Studies. Her field of specialization is modern Jewish literature and she teaches courses on American Jewish Literature, The Literature of the Holocaust, Modern Hebrew Literature, Gender and Jewish Literaure, as well as an Introduction to Jewish Literature. She is currently a Continue Reading »
Rabbi James Diamond z”l first joined the BYFI faculty in 1997, and was an active part of the community until his passing in 2013. Jim was Executive Director at Princeton University’s Center for Jewish Life (Hillel) and served as a consultant to Hillel’s Schusterman International Center.