David Silber is the founder and dean of Drisha Institute for Jewish Education in New York and Israel. Rabbi Silber received ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. He is a recipient of the Covenant Award, for excellence in innovative Jewish education, and is the author of A Passover Haggadah: Go Forth and Learn (Jewish Publication Society 2011), For Such a Time as This: Biblical Reflections in the Book of Esther (Koren Publishers 2017), and Malkhut Adam: Iyunim Bsefer Shmuel (Maggid 2021). He is also a nationally acclaimed lecturer on the Bible. Rabbi Silber is married to Dr. Devora Steinmetz. They have eight children and live in New York City.

Click here to access other recorded classes by David Silber.

David Silber is the founder and dean of Drisha Institute for Jewish Education in New York and Israel. Rabbi Silber received ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. He is a recipient of the Covenant Award, for excellence in innovative Jewish education, and is the author of A Passover Haggadah: Go Forth and Learn (Jewish Publication Society 2011), For Such a Time as This: Biblical Reflections in the Book of Esther (Koren Publishers 2017), and Malkhut Adam: Iyunim Bsefer Shmuel (Maggid 2021). He is also a nationally acclaimed lecturer on the Bible. Rabbi Silber is married to Dr. Devora Steinmetz. They have eight children and live in New York City.

Click here to access other recorded classes by David Silber.

No’a L. bat Miri regrets that she let this project become her responsibility.

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.

Chanan Gafni Studied at the Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem, while earning his academic degrees from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (MA) and Harvard University (PhD). He currently teaches at Hebrew University and Midreshet Lindenbaum. His publications include The Mishnah’s Plain Sense (2011), and most recently: Conceptions of the Oral Law in Modern Jewish Scholarship (2019).

Dr. Malka Z. Simkovich is the Crown-Ryan Chair of Jewish Studies and the director of the Catholic-Jewish Studies program at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. She is the author of The Making of Jewish Universalism: From Exile to Alexandria (2016), and Discovering Second Temple Literature: The Scriptures and Stories That Shaped Early Judaism (2018), which received the 2019 AJL Judaica Reference Honor Award. Simkovich’s articles have been published in journals such as the Harvard Theological Review and the Journal for the Study of Judaism, as well as on online forums such as The Lehrhaus, TheTorah.com, and the Times of Israel. She is involved in numerous local and international interreligious dialogue projects which help to increase understanding and friendship between Christians and Jews.

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.

David Silber is the founder and dean of Drisha Institute for Jewish Education in New York and Israel. Rabbi Silber received ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. He is a recipient of the Covenant Award, for excellence in innovative Jewish education, and is the author of A Passover Haggadah: Go Forth and Learn (Jewish Publication Society 2011), For Such a Time as This: Biblical Reflections in the Book of Esther (Koren Publishers 2017), and Malkhut Adam: Iyunim Bsefer Shmuel (Maggid 2021). He is also a nationally acclaimed lecturer on the Bible. Rabbi Silber is married to Dr. Devora Steinmetz. They have eight children and live in New York City.

Click here to access other recorded classes by David Silber.

Darshanit Dr. Miriam Udel is associate professor of German Studies and Jewish Studies at Emory University, where her teaching focuses on Yiddish language, literature, and culture. She holds an AB in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University, as well as a PhD in Comparative Literature from the same institution. She was ordained in 2019 as part of the first cohort of the Executive Ordination Track at Yeshivat Maharat, a program designed to bring qualified mid-career women into the Orthodox rabbinate.

Udel’s academic research interests include 20th-century Yiddish literature and culture, Jewish children’s literature, and American-Jewish literature. She is the author of Never Better!: The Modern Jewish Picaresque (University of Michigan Press), winner of the 2017 National Jewish Book Award in Modern Jewish Thought and Experience. Honey on the Page: A Treasury of Yiddish Children’s Literature appeared in October with New York University Press.

Click here to access podcasts recorded by Miriam Udel.

Dr. Tammy Jacobowitz is the chair of the Bible department at the SAR High School, and is the founding director of Makom B’Siach at SAR, an immersive adult education program for parents. She has taught Bible for the Wexner Heritage program, and she is also an adjunct faculty member of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, where she teaches the Pedagogy of Tanakh. She is a graduate of the Drisha Institute’s Scholars Circle, and completed her PhD in Midrash at the University of Pennsylvania in 2010 as a Wexner Graduate fellow. Dr. Jacobowitz is currently at work on a parsha book, geared towards parents reading to young children. She lives in Teaneck, NJ with her husband, Prof. Ronnie Perelis, and their four children.

Click here to access podcasts recorded by Tammy Jacobowitz.

Rabbi David A. Ingber is the Founder and Senior Rabbi at Romemu, NYC, a community he founded in 2008 that today has over 700 households. A disciple of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, famed founder of the Jewish Renewal movement, Rabbi Ingber was ordained by “Reb Zalman” in 2004. Rabbi Ingber serves on faculty for the Wexner Heritage Program, The Shalom Hartman Institute of North America and Israel, The 92nd Street Y’s program for Rabbinic Entrepreneurship, and other institutions. He was an AJWS Global Justice Fellow, as well as a Rabbinic Fellow in the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Rabbinic Leadership Initiative. Rabbi Ingber has lectured extensively on the topics of spirituality, theology, Jewish mysticism, prayer and meditation. He lives in Manhattan with his amazing wife Ariel and their three children, Baer, Tal, and Or.

Dr. Yair Furstenberg is the chair of the Talmud Department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on the history of early rabbinic literature and law within its Greco-Roman context. In his publications he examines the emergence of the rabbinic movement and the evolution of the Mishnah. His current project aims to integrate rabbinic legal activity into its Roman provincial context. He is the founder and served as a co-gabbay of “Hakhel – Minyan Shivyoni Baka”

Yedidah holds a Phd in Talmud from Tel Aviv University on the topic of Jews of blemished lineage in rabbinic literature. She is currently a visiting scholar at New York University and a Rothschild postdoctoral fellow.

She has taught at Drisha, Yeshivat Hadar, Bar Ilan University, and the Paideia Institute in Stockholm. Yedidah has studied at Midreshet Lindenbaum, Migdal Oz, Drisha and Matan, she holds a BA in Talmud and Classics from Hebrew University, and has been a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute. Her current research project focuses on the culture of study and examination of the personal behavior of Rabbis in rabbinic literature.