Rabbanit Leah Sarna is the Associate Director of Education and Director of High School Programs at Drisha. She previously served as Director of Religious Engagement at Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel Congregation in Chicago, a leading urban Orthodox congregation.

She was ordained at Yeshivat Maharat in 2018, holds a BA from Yale University in Philosophy & Psychology, and also trained at the SKA Beit Midrash for Women at Migdal Oz, Drisha and the Center for Modern Torah Leadership. Rabbanit Sarna’s published works have appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Lehrhaus and MyJewishLearning.

She has lectured in Orthodox synagogues and Jewish communal settings around the world and loves spreading her warm, energetic love for Torah and Mitzvot with Jews in all stages of life.

Elisha Russ-Fishbane, Associate Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University, is a historian of Jewish culture in the medieval Islamic world and a scholar of medieval Jewish thought, law, and literature. His first book on the movement of Jewish-Sufi pietism in medieval Egypt, entitled Judaism, Sufism, and the Pietists of Medieval Egypt: A Study of Abraham Maimonides and His Circle (Oxford University Press, 2015), was awarded the Salo Wittmayer Baron Book Prize by the American Academy for Jewish Research. His second book, Ageing in Medieval Jewish Culture, forthcoming with The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, is a study of aging in the Jewish communities of the medieval Mediterranean and Near East and of old age as a paradigm and ideal in medieval Jewish culture. He is currently working on a study of how Islam, both as religious rival and political power, was portrayed in medieval Jewish literature, as well as how Muslims were depicted in the daily documents of the Cairo Genizah.

Erin Leib Smokler is the Director of Spiritual Development and Internship Coordinator at Yeshivat Maharat, where she teaches Chassidut and Pastoral Torah. She earned her PhD and MA from the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, her BA from Harvard University, and studied in Drisha’s Scholars Circle. She previously served as Assistant Literary Editor of The New Republic magazine, and her writing has appeared there as well as in The New York Times Book Review, The Jerusalem Report, and The Jewish Week.

Click here to access podcasts recorded by Erin Leib Smokler.

Dr. David Zvi Kalman is Scholar in Residence and Director of New Media at Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, where he was also a member of the inaugural cohort of North American David Hartman Center Fellows. David Zvi leads the Kogod Research Center’s research seminar on Judaism and the Natural World.

David Zvi holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA from the University of Toronto. His research touches on Jewish law, the history of technology, technology and ethics, material culture, and Islamic jurisprudence. He is the owner of Print-O-Craft Press and the KLMNOPS art house. His work can be found at www.davidzvi.com.

Erin Leib Smokler is the Director of Spiritual Development and Internship Coordinator at Yeshivat Maharat, where she teaches Chassidut and Pastoral Torah. She earned her PhD and MA from the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, her BA from Harvard University, and studied in Drisha’s Scholars Circle. She previously served as Assistant Literary Editor of The New Republic magazine, and her writing has appeared there as well as in The New York Times Book Review, The Jerusalem Report, and The Jewish Week.

Click here to access podcasts recorded by Erin Leib Smokler.

Erin Leib Smokler is the Director of Spiritual Development and Internship Coordinator at Yeshivat Maharat, where she teaches Chassidut and Pastoral Torah. She earned her PhD and MA from the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, her BA from Harvard University, and studied in Drisha’s Scholars Circle. She previously served as Assistant Literary Editor of The New Republic magazine, and her writing has appeared there as well as in The New York Times Book Review, The Jerusalem Report, and The Jewish Week.

Click here to access podcasts recorded by Erin Leib Smokler.

Erin Leib Smokler is the Director of Spiritual Development and Internship Coordinator at Yeshivat Maharat, where she teaches Chassidut and Pastoral Torah. She earned her PhD and MA from the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, her BA from Harvard University, and studied in Drisha’s Scholars Circle. She previously served as Assistant Literary Editor of The New Republic magazine, and her writing has appeared there as well as in The New York Times Book Review, The Jerusalem Report, and The Jewish Week.

Click here to access podcasts recorded by Erin Leib Smokler.

Erin Leib Smokler is the Director of Spiritual Development and Internship Coordinator at Yeshivat Maharat, where she teaches Chassidut and Pastoral Torah. She earned her PhD and MA from the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, her BA from Harvard University, and studied in Drisha’s Scholars Circle. She previously served as Assistant Literary Editor of The New Republic magazine, and her writing has appeared there as well as in The New York Times Book Review, The Jerusalem Report, and The Jewish Week.

Click here to access podcasts recorded by Erin Leib Smokler.

Erin Leib Smokler is the Director of Spiritual Development and Internship Coordinator at Yeshivat Maharat, where she teaches Chassidut and Pastoral Torah. She earned her PhD and MA from the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, her BA from Harvard University, and studied in Drisha’s Scholars Circle. She previously served as Assistant Literary Editor of The New Republic magazine, and her writing has appeared there as well as in The New York Times Book Review, The Jerusalem Report, and The Jewish Week.

Click here to access podcasts recorded by Erin Leib Smokler.

Tsvi Blanchard is the Meyer Struckmann Professor of Jewish Law at Humboldt University Faculty of Law in Berlin as well as scholar-in-residence at the Institute for Law, Religion and Lawyer’s Work at Fordham Law School. In addition to being an ordained Orthodox rabbi, he holds PhDs in Philosophy and Clinical Psychology. He has taught philosophy and Jewish studies at Washington, Northwestern and Loyola Universities as well as at Drisha Institute and has had a private practice in psychotherapy. In addition to his articles on Jewish law, his publications include the 2002 Riesman award winning “How to Think About Being Jewish in the Twenty-First Century: a New Model of Jewish Identity Construction,” a book that he co-authored, entitled Embracing Life, Facing Death: a Jewish Guide to Palliative Care, and non-academic writings on a variety of Jewish topics.

Ariel Evan Mayse joined the faculty of Stanford University in 2017 as an assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies and serves as the rabbi-in-residence at Atiq: Jewish Maker Institute (atiqmakers.org).

Previously he was the Director of Jewish Studies and Visiting Assistant Professor of Modern Jewish Thought at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts. Mayse holds a Ph.D. in Jewish Studies from Harvard University and rabbinic ordination from Beit Midrash Har’el in Israel.

His most recent publications include Speaking Infinities: God and Language in the Teachings for Rabbi Dov Ber of Mezritsh (University of Pennsylvania, 2020); Hasidism: Writings on Devotion, Community and Life in the Modern World (Brandeis University Press, 2020), edited with Sam Berrin Shonkoff, and The Language of Truth in the Mother Tongue (Magnes Press, 2020, in Hebrew).

Erin Leib Smokler is the Director of Spiritual Development and Internship Coordinator at Yeshivat Maharat, where she teaches Chassidut and Pastoral Torah. She earned her PhD and MA from the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, her BA from Harvard University, and studied in Drisha’s Scholars Circle. She previously served as Assistant Literary Editor of The New Republic magazine, and her writing has appeared there as well as in The New York Times Book Review, The Jerusalem Report, and The Jewish Week.

Click here to access podcasts recorded by Erin Leib Smokler.

Rolando Matalon is the Rabbi at Congregation Bnai Jeshurun in Manhattan. He received ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary from which he has a Masters of Hebrew Letters. He has a BS in Chemistry from the Universite de Montreal.

Erin Leib Smokler is the Director of Spiritual Development and Internship Coordinator at Yeshivat Maharat, where she teaches Chassidut and Pastoral Torah. She earned her PhD and MA from the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, her BA from Harvard University, and studied in Drisha’s Scholars Circle. She previously served as Assistant Literary Editor of The New Republic magazine, and her writing has appeared there as well as in The New York Times Book Review, The Jerusalem Report, and The Jewish Week.

Click here to access podcasts recorded by Erin Leib Smokler.

Erin Leib Smokler is the Director of Spiritual Development and Internship Coordinator at Yeshivat Maharat, where she teaches Chassidut and Pastoral Torah. She earned her PhD and MA from the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought, her BA from Harvard University, and studied in Drisha’s Scholars Circle. She previously served as Assistant Literary Editor of The New Republic magazine, and her writing has appeared there as well as in The New York Times Book Review, The Jerusalem Report, and The Jewish Week.

Click here to access podcasts recorded by Erin Leib Smokler.