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Future of the Family July 7, 2014 – July 18, 2014

Participant Biographies

Ben Berdichev Israel

Ben Berdichev, after serving in the , studied Jewish thought and psychology at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. He is currently completing his M.A. at Bar-Ilan University in rehabilitation and clinical psychology. He is also studying toward rabbinical smicha. His research interests include the interplay between Jewish thought and philosophy and psychology theory. Mr. Berdichev has served as a counselor and educator in a variety of settings, including the Bialik College in Melbourne, Australia; the Yiftach High School in Israel (for teenage boys at risk); and the Melech Ha’aretz pre-army leadership training program in Ein Geddi. Mr. Berdichev lives in Ovnat, at the northern tip of the Dead Sea, with his wife and daughter.

Miriam Berger United States

Miriam Berger is chair of the Tanakh department at the Ramaz Upper School in New York City, where she has taught Tanakh and Jewish thought since 2006. In addition to her role in the classroom, she shapes the Judaic studies curriculum, teaches interdisciplinary seminars, and is heavily involved in student Israel guidance and the student AIPAC group. Ms. Berger received her B.S. in finance from the Sy Syms School of Business at Yeshiva University and an M.A. in modern Jewish history from the Bernard Revel School of Jewish Studies. She recently completed an M.A. in Jewish philosophy at Columbia University, where her thesis work focused on the messianic writings of Isaac Abarbanel. Ms. Berger has lectured widely to adult audiences in a variety of places, including Manhattan Jewish Experience, the Jewish Center, Lincoln Square Synagogue, Agudath Sholom of Stamford, and Yeshiva University. She lives in Washington Heights in New York City with her husband, Dr. Ari Berger.

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Rachel Besser United States

Rachel Besser has been teaching Bible and Jewish philosophy at the Frisch School in Paramus, New Jersey since 2001. She has served as the chair of her department, written curriculum, and been part of the guidance team. Ms. Besser has also lectured throughout the tri-state area on issues of Bible and Jewish thought. She has a Master’s degree in English literature from Hunter College and has edited a number of books.

Jordanna Cope-Yossef Israel

Jordanna Cope-Yossef holds an LL.B. from the Hebrew University Law School and a Master's degree from the joint Tel Aviv-Northwestern Executive LL.M. Program in Public and International Law. She is a Nishmat-certified “Halakhic Advisor” and is currently studying Jewish marriage and divorce law at Midreshet Lindenbaum. Cope-Yossef is a senior lecturer in Talmud and Jewish law at Matan-The Women's Institute for Torah Studies in . She has lectured extensively at colleges, seminars, and conferences on Jewish law and ethics—the ethics of war, medical ethics, and reproductive technologies—as well as hasidut and the Jewish lifecycle. From 1999 to 2012 Ms. Cope-Yossef was director of Matan's Advanced Talmudic Institute for Women. In 2005 at Matan she founded and continues to teach the first women's daf yomi (worldwide page-a-day of Talmud) for women by women. Ms. Cope-Yossef established the Mifnim Center for Legal and Halakhic Solutions and was recently appointed to head the Beit Hillel Rabbis' Initiative on Get Refusal Solutions (GRS). Mifnim and Beit Hillel both promote, among other means, prenuptial agreements as a pre-emptive solution to the problem of get refusal. Originally from Chicago, Illinois, Ms. Cope- Yossef has lived for the past 27 years with her family in the pluralistic community of Tekoa, Israel.

Sara Eliash Israel

Sara Eliash was the founder of Ulpanat Lehava, one of the largest girls’ high schools in Israel, and served as it's headmaster until 2007. Since then, she has managed a beit midrash for women in Kedumim and serves on several public committees, including the Council, and Menifa. Ms. Eliash chairs a public committee for family matters under the Ministry of Religious Affairs, manages the project “Coffee for Couples” for the empowerment of the family, and teaches school management in the M.A. program of Orot Academy. The rest of her time is dedicated to her husband, 10 children, and several grandchildren.

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Ori Fish Israel

Ori Fish lives in Jerusalem, Israel. He is married and has five children. He received his rabbinic ordination in Yoreh Yoreh on behalf of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. Mr. Fish was a commander in the Israel Defense Forces as part of the Givati Unit. He served as the students’ rabbi of Cambridge University and East Anglia. After returning to Israel, he studied paychology and Jewish philosophy at the Hebrew University. He established and is still a partner in Tzohar Lahakika (Tzohar to Legislation), an initiative of the Tzohar Rabbis Association that deals with creating a bridge between parliamentary activities and a Jewish traditional approach. Mr. Fish is also an educational psychologist, working mainly within the haredi community in Jerusalem. In addition, he is the rabbi of a community and is studying for ordination as a city rabbi by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. He is also a doctoral student writing about ethical models in early hasidic thought.

Efraim Goldfarb Israel

Efraim (Efi) Goldfarb is chief operating officer of Yedidut Toronto, an Israeli non-governmental organization that acts on behalf of the Toronto, Canada-based Friedberg Family Charitable Fund. In his role he is responsible for eight social projects in a wide range of areas ranging from academic studies to supporting women upon their exit from shelters for abused women. Each project is designed to empower the beneficiaries and is based on knowledge, fellowship, and financial support. Before his position with Yedidut Toronto, Mr. Goldfarb had a career in the Israeli technology industry as a senior manager of two very successful start-ups, Mercury Interactive (now part of Hewlett Packard) and TopTier (now part of the German software company SAP). Before those positions, he held information technology positions in Toronto. He earned his Master’s degree in industrial engineering-information systems from the University of Toronto and his B.Sc. engineering degree at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. He was an officer in the Israel Defense Forces. He is married, with five children and three grandchildren. His youngest child is an 11-year-old foster daughter who has been part of the family for the past six years.

Nati Helfgot United States

Nathaniel (Nati) Helfgot is chair of the Bible and Jewish thought departments of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School and a Judaic studies faculty member at the Salanter Akiba Riverdale (SAR) Academy High School. He also serves as rabbi of Congregation Netivot Shalom in Teaneck, New Jersey and is on the faculty of the Drisha Institute for Jewish Education and the Wexner Fellowship Program. He is the author and editor of a number of books in English and Hebrew, including Community, Covenant and Commitment: Selected Letters and Public Communications of Rabbi Joseph B. Solveitchik. Most recently, in 2013, he published Mikra and Meaning: Essays on the Bible and Its

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Interpretation. Rabbi Helfgoti is on the editorial board of Jewish Educational Leadership, an associate editor of the Meorot Journal, and on the steering committee of the Orthodox Forum.

Yael Levin Hungerford United States

Yael Levin Hungerford is a Ph.D. candidate in the political science department of Boston College, focusing on political theory. She is interested in understanding the foundations, as well as the virtues and limitations, of the modern liberal project and is currently writing a dissertation on the philosophy and political thought of Charles S. Peirce. Before graduate school she worked for several years as a research assistant at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. She earned her A.B. in philosophy from the University of Chicago in 2004.

Karen Hyman United States

Karen Hyman has worked in undergraduate education and done Jewish community work for several decades in a variety of professional and volunteer leadership roles in Chicago, Baltimore, and Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. She currently serves as associate director of The Illinois Foundry for Innovation in Engineering Education (iFoundry) at the University of Illinois’s flagship campus and leads the iFoundry mission: to integrate humanistic learning into Illinois’ highly technical and specialized engineering education. As a volunteer leader, she has been actively engaged in leading programs and philanthropic initiatives for synagogues, religious schools, the Jewish federations of Baltimore and Champaign and, most recently, the Chabad movement on campus. She earned her B.A. in general studies in the humanities and an M.A. from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and remains a life-long student of the great books.

Boaz Levy Israel

Boaz Levy is the opinion editor of Mida, an Israeli website that provides conservative political commentary on events in Israel, the Middle East, and the world. He also served as opinion editor of the daily newspaper Makor Rishon and as content and instruction manager at the Maimonides Center in Tiberias. He holds a degree in education, with honors, from Lifshitz College, with an expansion of studies to Jewish thought from the Hebrew University. He is currently a law student at Hebrew University. He participated in the Outstanding Scholars Program of the College of Statesmanship and the Tikvah Fund’s summer program on Political Thought, Economics, and Strategy and is a member of the national liberal researchers program at the Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem.

THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022

Ziv Maor Israel

Ziv Maor has served as the Spokesperson of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel since 2012. Prior to that he was CEO of Israel Media Watch, a media review non-governmental organization, and Parliamentary Assistant to MKs Uri (2010-2012) and Michael Eitan (2007). Mr. Maor was news editor and Wall Street correspondent for TheMarker.co.il (2008-2010) and security affairs analyst for omedia.co.il and served in the Israel Defense Forces as editor-in-charge of Mahatz, the infantry and paratroops commanders’ gazette (2002-2005).

Noam Neusner United States

Noam Neusner draws on more than two decades of communications experience gained from working in the private sector, the U.S. government, and journalism. Mr. Neusner has extensive experience in speechwriting and speech preparation, media preparation and training, and strategic communications planning. He served as principal economic and domestic policy speechwriter to President George W. Bush for nearly two years, managing all communications and media relations for the Office of Management and Budget and twice overseeing the editing and production of the federal budget. He was also the President’s liaison to the Jewish community. He worked for nearly a dozen years as an award-winning financial journalist at U.S. News & World Report, Bloomberg News, and the Tampa Tribune. Mr. Neusner has co-authored or edited four books with the Talmudic scholar Professor Jacob Neusner. In 2007, the younger Mr. Neusner was the visiting Walter E. Hussman Sr. Scholar in Business Journalism at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in writing seminars from The Johns Hopkins University.

Amihai Radzyner Israel

Amihai Radzyner is a professor of Jewish law on the Faculty of Law of Bar-Ilan University. His researches deal with Talmudic law, the history of Jewish law and Jewish law research, the history of Israeli law, and current halachic family law in Israel. He is the chief editor of Hadin Vehadayan (The Law and Its Decisor): Rabbinical Court Decisions in Family Matters, a position he has held since 2003. He has received numerous academic awards and grants, including the 2008 Cegla Prize for the Best Article of a Young Legal Scholar in Hebrew, and the 2010 Tager Prize for the Best Article in Jewish Law. He is the author of 'Dine Qenasot': A Research in Talmudic Law (2014); co-author of The Religious Community and the Constitution: What Can History Teach Us?; and co-editor of Studies in Halakha and Jewish Law: Judge and Judging (2006). He has also written several articles and book chapters that have been published in both Israel and the United States, many of them dealing with Jewish family law.

THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022

Noam Samet Israel

Noam Samet is a rabbi in Yeshivat Siach-Yitschak in , where he teaches Talmud and Jewish thought. A Ph.D. candidate at Ben Gurion University, he is writing a doctoral thesis with the title, “Ketsot Hachosen”—Beginning of the “Lamdanut:” Features and Tendencies. Rabbi Samet edited a critical edition of the kabbalistic essay, “Tomer Devora.” He is a fellow of the Institute for the Advancement of Rav Shagar’s Writings and has edited two of Rav Shagar’s books. Rabbi Samet lives in the integrated community of Nokdim, where religious and non-religious groups live together; since 2012 he has been chairman of its Community Governing Council.

Ilan Schimmel United States

Rabbi Ilan Schimmel has taught at the Ramaz Upper School in New York City since 2011 and is currently the head of its Judaism Department. He teaches interdisciplinary courses in Jewish thought and Bible to seniors and juniors. He holds an M.A. in medieval Jewish philosophy from the Bernard Revel Graduate School and is currently working on completing his doctoral dissertation on the interpretation of Maimonidean philosophy in the work of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Previously, he taught Judaic studies at the Yeshiva of Flatbush for seven years.

Shai Secunda Israel

Shai Secunda is a fellow of the Martin Buber Society of Fellows at the Hebrew University, where he teaches in the comparative religion and Hebrew literature departments. He is founder and co-editor of the Talmud blog, an online forum for the study of rabbinic literature in its various contexts. He has published papers on rabbinic literature, Iranian studies, and their nexus in Jewish Quarterly Review, Association of Jewish Studies Review, Jewish Studies Quarterly, Studia Iranica, Numen, Bulletin of the Asia Institute, and Iranica Antiqua and has written for the Jewish Review of Books and Tablet. His book, The Iranian Talmud; Reading the Bavli in its Sasanian Context (2014), was recently published by University of Pennsylvania Press. He lives in Modi’in, Israel.

Yosef Sharabi Israel

Yosef Sharabi is a graduate of advanced Jewish studies institutions. He has ordinations as a rabbi (1994) and a dayan (2002) from the Chief Rabbinate of Israel. In 2001, he began his legal studies at Bar-Ilan University, graduating with an LL.B. (2004) and completing his Ph.D. in 2012 ("Juridical Intervention in the Prevention and Resolution of Marital Crises in Jewish and Israeli Law"). Dr.

THE TIKVAH FUND 165 E. 56th Street New York, New York 10022

Sharabi serves as a dayan of the Monetary Rabbinic Court in Kedumim (2001-2014); his fields of expertise in research and lectures focus on family law and Jewish law. Among other study programs, he taught in the Rabbinical Training Program in the Collegio Rabbinico Italiano in Rome (1996- 2006). He was a researcher in the Application of Jewish Law Center at Netanya Academic College (2005-2011), where he wrote numerous briefs and opinions on Jewish law for judges in the Israeli civil court system. He is a Young Scholar in the Judaism and Human Rights program of the Israel Democracy Institute (2011-2014) and a member of a thought group related to Jewish Renewal movements (2013-2014). This year he is also serving as a counselor in the Civil Legal Aid Clinic in Jewish Law Tribunals at Bar-Ilan University.

Chaim Strauchler United States

Chaim Strauchler is the rabbi of Shaarei Shomayim Congregation in Toronto. A native of West Orange, New Jersey, Rabbi Strauchler received his ordination from Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary of Yeshiva University. He served as rabbi of Beit Chaverim Synagogue in Westport, Connecticut from 2005 to 2008 before joining Shaarei Shomayim in August, 2008,. He trained under Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt at the Riverdale (New York) Jewish Center from 2003 to 2005. Rabbi Strauchler believes that the role of a rabbi is to care for people. This entails the need to be there for them in their times of need, shepherd them through the ups and downs of life, and at the same time inspire them to be catalysts for personal spiritual growth.

Rinat Weigler Israel

Rinat Weigler has worked as an attorney in the legal department of the Israel Ministry of Social Affairs and Social Services since 1993. She has appeared in court as a representative of the Attorney General, handling and litigating cases involving guardianship of the elderly, mentally ill, and disabled and the adoption of children. She has also appeared in juvenile courts in matters concerning children at risk. Today Mrs. Weigler serves as Senior Deputy to the Legal Advisor of the Ministry and is involved in legislation and regulation on all issues relating to welfare and social services. She also coordinates and oversees the area of guardianship in the different branches of the Legal Department, supervising and guiding the attorneys who handle these cases in family courts throughout the country. In addition, her work includes providing legal counsel to the Minister, the General Manager, the various Ministry departments, the administrative and professional staff, and welfare officers and social workers in municipalities and local agencies throughout the country. From 2000 to 2003 Mrs. Weigler co-chaired the Subcommittee on Children in Out-of-Home Care of the Legislative Committee on the Rights of the Child, headed by Judge S. Rotlevi of the Ministry of Justice. She lives in Jerusalem and is married, a mother of three, and a grandmother of three.