PROFILES OF PRESENTERS Combating Antisemitism December 2020 Council of American Jewish Museums

Melanie Adams, PhD, currently serves as the Director of the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum. Before joining the Smithsonian, Dr. Adams served as the Deputy Director for Learning Initiatives at the Minnesota Historical Society overseeing the state’s 26 historic sites. Prior to Minnesota, she spent twelve years at the Missouri Historical Society as the Managing Director for Community Education and Events. Dr. Adams is an active member of the museum community, served on the board of the American Association for State and Local History, and is a former president of the Association of Midwest Museums.

Ilana Burstein Benson joined University Museum in 2002, and since 2012 has served as Director of Museum Education. She is also adjunct professor of Museum Education at Yeshiva University’s Stern College for Women. She received her MS in Museum Education and Early Adolescence Education from Bank Street College, and has presented at educational conferences, including "Capacities for Imaginative Learning in the Museum Setting" for The Leadership Institute, and "Hands-on-History: An Experiential Approach to Social Studies" for The Jewish Education Project.

Jonah Boyarin is the Jewish Communities Liaison for the New York City Commission on Human Rights. He is an educator and writer on the topics of racism and antisemitism, and is a born-and-raised New Yorker, and Yiddish speaker. In 2015, Jonah co-founded the country’s first Diversity and Equity Program at a , at JCHS of the Bay. He was named by the Jewish Week as one of 2020’s “36 under 36.”

Amanda Coven is the Director of Education at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education. She leads the Education Department in developing dynamic programs for diverse audiences. Coven trains docents to engage visitors in conversation style tours and facilitates professional development opportunities for educators that encourage them to draw connections between histories. She helped draft the content for Oregon’s Holocaust and Genocide education mandate (SB664), and since it’s unanimous passing, works closely with the State Department of Education to prepare educators for its implementation.

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Sol Davis is the outgoing Executive Director of the Jewish History Museum in Tucson, and will start as Executive Director of the Jewish Museum of Maryland in 2021. He earned a PhD in Language, Reading and Culture at the University of Arizona in 2018. His dissertation is titled, “Teaching with Testimony: A Metalanguage.” Davis serves on the board of directors of the Council of American Jewish Museums. He has taught for the University of Arizona Honors College, College of Education, and Center for Judaic Studies.

Avi Decter, a founder and past president of CAJM, has worked in and with museums since 1972. He has served in senior positions at the National Museum of American History and the Winterthur Museum, and directed both the Museum of American Jewish History and the Jewish Museum of Maryland. Decter is the editor and co-author of half a dozen book-length catalogs and author, most recently, of Interpreting American Jewish History at Museums and Historic Sites (2016).

Liz Diament is a senior educator at the National Gallery of Art of Art where she develops and implements education for docents, manages school and general public tour, and works with teachers. She received a degree in Art History from Manchester University and a Masters in Museum Education from Bank Street College. During her three-year tenure at the Yeshiva University Museum, Diament became interested in how objects tell multiple stories and can be understood through many lenses. She works with teachers through a MOOC (Massive On-line Open Course) called Teaching Critical Thinking through Art inspired by Harvard’s Project Zero.

Ayala Fader received her PhD from New York University and is currently Professor of Anthropology at Fordham University. She is the author of the award-winning book Mitzvah Girls: Bringing Up the Next Generation of Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn (Princeton 2009). Recent fellowships include the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, which supported her latest book, Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age (2020). Dr. Fader is the co-founder and co-convener of the New York Working Group on Jewish Orthodoxies at Fordham’s Program.

Dr. Edna Friedberg is Senior Program Curator at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and host of the Museum's popular Facebook Live series. A graduate of the University of Illinois, she received her PhD from the Jewish Theological Seminary. Dr. Friedman joined the staff of the Holocaust Museum in 1999 and served as the historian for the Museum’s online Holocaust Encyclopedia. She also curated an exhibition on the legacy of the Nuremberg trials and postwar justice. Her essays connecting Holocaust history

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Sholom Friedmann is the Director of the Amud Aish Memorial Museum in Brooklyn. He has overseen the development of Holocaust exhibits in America and Europe, and developed Holocaust educational training and materials. He previously directed the Zechor Yemos Olam division of Torah Umesorah. Friedman’s education includes a Masters degree in Talmudic Law, a Bachelor’s degree in Hebrew Letters, Qualified Teachers Status from the Teaching Regulation Agency, and a Diploma in Emotional Factors in Learning from The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. He was a Fellow in Holocaust Education at the Imperial War Museum, London. Friedmann is also an ordained Rabbi.

Jordanna Gessler is the VP of Education and Exhibits at Holocaust Museum LA where she provides strategic leadership for the education and archive departments. She is active in several public service fellowships where she works with elected, civic, and community leaders to address critical challenges facing LA. Gessler earned a BA from University of Vermont and an MA from University of Haifa. She worked at Yad Vashem and received the 2014 Yad Vashem Award for Research. She has written articles and presented at conferences internationally on topics including contemporary antisemitism, fiction and the Holocaust, art and resistance, and teaching empathy.

Luna Goldberg is a Miami-based curator who currently serves as the Education Manager at the Jewish Museum of Florida – FIU. Goldberg’s research focuses on global contemporary art and identity politics with an emphasis on Israeli art. She is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Israel and served as the Curatorial Research Assistant for the Israeli Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale. Goldberg has curated exhibitions and programs in partnership with the Association for Israel Studies, Detroit Art Week, and the College Art Association, and has held positions at Artis, the Museum at Eldridge Street, and the Norton Museum of Art.

Ari Goldstein is Senior Public Programs Producer at the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in New York City, where he previously served as Manager of Special Projects for two years. An emerging museum professional, Ari studied Jewish Civilization with a focus on the Holocaust at Georgetown University and has been involved with Yahad-In Unum and with New York’s Stonewall 50 Consortium. At the Museum of Jewish Heritage, Ari worked on the opening of the exhibition "Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away."

Gabriel Goldstein is an independent curator, museum consultant and adjunct professor, working with institutions including the National Archives, Israel Antiquities 3

Authority, Claims Conference, and Wesleyan University. Goldstein worked at Yeshiva University Museum for over 20 years in curatorial and senior leadership roles, and has been the Consulting Curator of Judaic Art at the North Carolina Museum of Art since 2002. He previously worked at The Jewish Museum, and the Royal Ontario Museum. Goldstein served as the Chair of CAJM, and has led several professional development initiatives including CAJM's first mission to Israel in 2015.

Elaine Heumann Gurian is a consultant/advisor to museums and visitor centers that are beginning, building, or reinventing themselves. Gurian writes, speaks, and teaches about museums and inclusion around the world. She is the author of Civilizing the Museum (2006) and editor of Institutional Trauma: The Effect of Major Change on Museum Staff (1995). She was awarded the Distinguished Service to Museums Award in 2004.

Bryant Heinzelman is a veteran of the US Army, and a graduate of the Military Intelligence Cryptologic College of Corry Station, Pensacola. After a particularly difficult deployment to Iraq he shifted his focus from intelligence analysis to Jewish community building, interfaith outreach, and inclusion initiatives. Heinzelman is a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion consultant working primarily with North American Jewish organizations, a Jewish Educator, a Teen Engagement Mentor, a 2018 Jew V’ Nation Fellow, and a bluegrass hobbyist. He currently resides in Bellingham, Washington.

Judith Joseph is a Chicago-based artist, curator, and educator. Her projects include exhibits across the United States, as well as Vancouver, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Douro, Portugal. Her paintings, woodcuts, and ketubot are in hundreds of private and public collections. She is an Illinois Arts Council Artists’ Fellowship Awardee and a 3Arts Grant recipient. Joseph is on the faculty of the Chicago Botanic Garden, where she teaches watercolor painting and calligraphy. She teaches an Artists’ Beit Midrash through Orot Center for New Jewish Learning. She is co-curator of the Open Studios Programs for the Jewish Art Salon, an international organization.

Sean Kelley manages public programming at Eastern State Penitentiary. He produced the site’s award-winning audio tour, curated more than 100 site-specific artist installations at the site, and curated the exhibit "Prisons Today: Questions in the Age of Mass Incarceration," which won the 2017 Award for Excellence from the American Alliance of Museums. From 2017 to 2019 he oversaw “Hidden Lives Illuminated,” a project that produced 20 original films made by currently incarcerated individuals that were projected for a month onto Eastern State Penitentiary’s façade. Mr. Kelley visits active prisons and writes critically about museums and social justice.

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Rabbi Samuel Klein is Director of Jewish Engagement for the of Greater Seattle. In the everyday, Klein is involved in generating, developing, and implementing ideas to engage people in Jewish life, through formative and immersive experiences. An arts practitioner with a background in museum education, Klein holds Masters degrees in Theology from Cambridge University and History of Art from University College London, and he trained as a teaching artist at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

Tomasz Kuncewicz received Master's degrees in English Studies from Poznan University and in Jewish History with distinction from Brandeis University. His major interests are Polish-Jewish history, the Holocaust, antisemitism, other forms of xenophobia, and anti-discrimination education. He is a certified anti-discrimination educator in Poland. He has organized and led extensive study programs on history and heritage as well as diversity education for Polish, German, and Icelandic law enforcement; Polish teachers and educators; international graduate students; and US cadets and midshipmen. Since 2000, Kuncewicz has served as the Director of the Auschwitz Jewish Center.

Ruth Lichtenstein is the founder and director of Project Witness, a Holocaust Resource Educational Center in New York. She is the publisher of newspaper and hamodia.com. She is the editor-in-chief of Witness to History, an acclaimed textbook on the Holocaust. A publisher, lecturer, and noted author, she has received various awards, has written extensively on the Holocaust, and lectures internationally. Lichtenstein was listed on the Forward 50’s list of influential Jewish Americans in 2013.

Deborah Lipstadt is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She is widely known for having been sued for libel by David Irving, one of the world’s leading Holocaust deniers. The case, which lasted for six years, resulted in Irving being declared by the court to be “a right wing polemicist,” who engages in antisemitism, racism, and misogyny. That trial was depicted in the 2016 film Denial, based on her book History on Trial: My Day in Court with a Holocaust Denier. Dr. Lipstadt is the author of several other books on the Holocaust, including The Eichmann Trial and Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust. Her book, Antisemitism: Here and Now, provides an analysis of current trends that bolster prejudice and hostility towards Jews in today’s world.

Judy Margles is Director of the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education. During her tenure, she has managed the merger of the Oregon Holocaust Resource Center and the Oregon Jewish Museum, and, in 2017, the purchase of a new home for the Museum. Margles speaks frequently at conferences and professional meetings. Her newest essay, Cross Cultural Engagement at the Oregon Jewish 5

Museum appears in Global Mobilities: Refugees, Exiles and Immigrants, published by Routledge in 2017. Margles is a past Board Chair of CAJM and served on the board of the AAM between 2013 and 2019.

A musician, educator, and ba'al tefilah, Deborah Sacks Mintz serves as a resource to communities across North America and beyond who seek to deepen their practice of empowered song and connective prayer. She serves on faculty at Hadar's Rising Song Institute, and is a rabbinic fellow at B'nai Jeshurun NYC. In addition to composing new Jewish melodies and facilitating leadership workshops nationwide, Mintz can be found collaborating with a diverse range of musicians. A Wexner Graduate Fellow, she is pursuing rabbinical ordination at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and holds degrees in music and religious anthropology from the University of Michigan.

Gugulethu Moyo is currently co-director of Jewish History Museum and Holocaust History Center in Tucson. She has had a multifaceted career as a human rights advocate spanning three continents. She started her career as a lawyer in the pensions industry and was the founding Executive Director of Media Defence, a London-based organization that provides legal assistance to journalists, citizen journalists, and independent media across the world. She received law degrees from the University of Oxford and University of Zimbabwe and has studied finance and interior design at graduate level. She has experienced life in Jewish community around the world including Washington DC, Greater Boston, India, London, Jamaica, and Tunisia.

Professor Pamela Nadell holds the Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s and Gender History at American University where she directs the Jewish Studies Program and was named Scholar/Teacher of the Year. Her books include Women Who Would Be Rabbis A past president of the Association for Jewish Studies and recipient of the American Jewish Historical Society’s Friedman Award for distinguished service, she has consulted with the National Museum of American Jewish History and the Library of Congress. Her book, America’s Jewish Women: A History from Colonial Times to Today (2019) won the National Jewish Book Award – Everett Family Foundation Jewish Book of the Year.

Braden Paynter is the Director for Methodology and Practice at Sites of Conscience, where he helps good ideas and relationships move around the world. In particular he supports members in developing programming, exhibitions, equity, and community engagement strategies. Before joining the Coalition, Paynter worked with the National Park Service at the Frederick Douglass National Historic Site.

Yosef Rapaport was born in Canada, and was formerly editor for Hamodia and a media consultant for Agudath Israel of America. He is currently a Yiddish Podcaster and the editor of JP Newsletter. 6

Kevin Ritter is a freelance communications professional pursuing a Master’s of Urban Planning with interest building an equitable urban, public, and cultural sphere. He currently serves as editor-in-chief for the Urban Review, an urban policy and planning journal based out of Hunter College. He has also served as the Visitor Experience Manager of the South Street Seaport Museum.

Lisa Sasaki is the Director of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, which brings Asian Pacific American history, art, and culture to communities through experiences online and across the US. Previously she was Director of the Audience & Civic Engagement Center at the Oakland Museum of California and Director of Program Development at the Japanese American National Museum. Sasaki has also served as President of the Western Museums Association’s Board of Directors, as a member of AAM’s DEAI working group, and is a member of CAJM’s Advisory Council.

Laura Schiavo is Associate Professor of Museum Studies at George Washington University, where she teaches museum history and theory, museums and social justice, and collections management. Her research looks at the relationship between museums, historic sites, objects, and identity, including “What to Do with Heritage: The Jewish Museum, 1931-1943” in the forthcoming Radical Roots of Public History. Previously, Schiavo was a curator at the City Museum of Washington DC, the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington, and the National Building Museum. Schiavo holds a PhD in American Studies from George Washington University and a BA in Sociology from Wesleyan University.

Leah Simpson is the Executive Director of CANDLES where she has been on staff since 2017. Her undergraduate degree is in education with an emphasis on gifted students. In 2012 Simpson was chosen to travel to sites and museums in Europe and Israel with the Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Teachers Program; afterward, she completed her master’s degree in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Gratz College. She currently lives in Terre Haute with her husband.

Dr. Jane Shapiro has been teaching adults for over thirty years in classes ranging from weekly Torah study to Jewish thought, history and literature. She is one of the co- founders of Orot: Center for New Jewish Learning. She is a graduate of Princeton University, studied at Columbia University, and received her doctorate from the Jewish Theological Seminary. In 2017, Shapiro received an Educators Award from the Covenant Foundation. In 2018 she was featured in an Eli talk on “The Torah of Bubbiehood.”

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Jill Vexler, PhD is a cultural anthropologist who curates exhibitions about cultural identity and social history. Her graduate studies were at the National School of Anthropology in Mexico City and the University of California, LA – from which she received her MA and PhD. Her first work in the Jewish community was as co-curator of the Crown Heights History Project for the Brooklyn Children’s Museum and Brooklyn Historical Society. Since 1997, her exhibitions have focused on pre-war Jewish life and Holocaust-related themes, including: “Oświęcim, Oshpitzin, Auschwitz: Portrait of Memories” at the Auschwitz Jewish Center and “Letters to Sala – A Young Woman’s Life in Nazi Labor Camps” at the NYPL.

Eric Ward is a nationally recognized expert on the relationship between authoritarian movements, hate violence, and preserving an inclusive democracy. In his 30+ year civil rights career, he has worked with community groups, government and business leaders, human rights advocates, and philanthropy as an organizer, director, program officer, consultant, and board member. The recipient of the Peabody-Facebook Futures Media Award, Ward’s widely quoted writings and speeches are credited with key narrative shifts. He currently serves as Executive Director of Western States Center; Senior Fellow with Southern Poverty Law Center and Race Forward; and Co-Chair for The Proteus Fund.

Fred Wasserman, an independent curator and museum consultant, is an Acquisitions Curator for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He previously served as the Deputy Director for Programs at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, and as the Leir Curator at The Jewish Museum. He curated the permanent exhibitions at the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration, co-curated "Becoming Visible: The Legacy of Stonewall" at the New York Public Library, and was the founding director of the “Luboml” exhibition project. His exhibitions have been honored by the International Association of Art Critics, the AASLH, and the Society of American Archivists.

Melissa Martens Yaverbaum is Executive Director of the Council of American Jewish Museums, and has worked with museums for 27 years. Previously, she served as Director of Collections & Exhibitions at the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust; Curator of the Jewish Museum of Maryland; and Curator of the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum. She has also worked with the collections of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Newberry Library, and the Field Museum. She continues to curate interpretive exhibitions for Jewish museums, and works for the advancement of Jewish museums and the field.

Carole Zawatsky is a consultant with Conscient Strategies. She served as the CEO of the Edlavitch DCJCC for nine years, where she brought national recognition for its world-class arts and culture programming. She received her BA from the University of 8

Maryland and MA from George Washington University. Zawatsky has worked in arts, culture, and non-profit management for over 25 years. Her positions have included Director of Public Programs at the USHMM, Director of Education at The Jewish Museum, New York, Founding Executive Director of The Maltz Museum in Cleveland, and Chief Program Officer at the JCC of San Francisco.

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