Raphael (Raphy) founded Congregation B’nai Tikvah, Walnut Creek in 1981, and after 33 years in the pulpit is now its rabbi emeritus. He first taught at Lehrhaus in 1980 using the Mendes Flohr & Yehuda Reinharz documentary History of Modern Judaism. Since then, Lehrhaus Judaica had co-sponsored his Introduction to Judaism classes and courses in Modern Hebrew Literature and German Jewry. He is working on a course on “American Twists of Faith” for New Lehrhaus.

David is Emanuel Ringelblum Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Jewish History at the University of California, Davis. He was educated at UC Berkeley, the Hebrew University and UCLA. His most recent books are Hasidism: A New History (with seven co-authors), Gershom Scholem: Master of the Kabbalah and Not in the Heavens: The Tradition of Jewish Secular Thought. Earlier books are Gershom Scholem: Kabbalah and Counter-History, Power and Powerlessness in Jewish History, Eros and the Jews and Blood and Belief: The Circulation of a Symbol Between Jews and Christians. He is also the editor of Cultures of the Jews: A New History and the Norton Anthology of World Religions: Judaism. His books have been translated into eight languages and have won the National Jewish Book Award three times.

Julie recently returned to her roots in the Bay Area to serve as the Associate Rabbi and Educator at Temple Sinai in Oakland. Previously, she served at Temple Beth Shalom in Needham, MA upon ordination from HUC-JIR in 2019. Prior to rabbinical school, she worked in Jewish youth and teen programming including roles at the East Bay Jewish Teen Foundation and Berkeley Hillel. She is passionate about gender equity, reproductive health access, and helping individuals find their unique connections and pathways within Judaism.

David joined the New Lehrhaus board after initial volunteer work during the reconstitution of Lehrhaus Judaica. David’s involvement in the Jewish community dates back to his days as a co-founder of the Radical Jewish Union at UC Berkeley and editor of the Jewish Student Press Service in New York. He spent 25 years in Israel, including 18 years of kibbutz life. His professional career in biotechnology spanned 30 years in Israeli start-ups and in the U.S. He served six years as executive director for a disability rights non-profit in the Bay Area.

Katherine is a senior program officer at California Health Care Foundation’s where she leads grantmaking to advance health equity for Black Californians. The Foundation works to ensure that Californians — particularly those enrolled in Medi-Cal — receive responsive, comprehensive, and coordinated care that supports their health and well-being. She has served as Executive Director of Diversity and Equitable Care at Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, and Director of the Technology and Information Exchange Core at UCSF”s Center for AIDS Prevention Studies. She served as the President of the Board at Congregation Beth El in Berkeley and then at JFCS-East Bay. She now serves on the board of American Jewish World Service.

Eitan Lev Kensky is the Reinhard Family Curator of Judaica and Hebraica Collections, Humanities Resource Group. Three years as the Director of Collections Initiatives at the Yiddish Book Center, where he worked on a wide range of digital collections projects. He also managed the Book Center’s translation fellowship program, edited the annual translation issue of the Center’s magazine, and worked on an upcoming exhibition about Yiddish in the United States. Eitan taught Yiddish and Jewish Studies at Harvard and co-founded In Geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies, a digital, open access journal. He holds a PhD in Jewish Studies from Harvard, and his own research focuses on twentieth-century American Jewish Culture. He also has a particular interest in Jewish film and media.

Janis was part of the founding of the groundbreaking San Francisco Jewish Film Festival. After 21 years she departed to the Mill Valley Film Festival and taught college-level film classes at Stanford, SF State University, and UC Davis.

Fred the founder and director emeritus of Lehrhaus Judaica, is an award-winning educator, teacher and the author (with Eva Libitzky) of Out on a Ledge: Enduring the Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz, and Beyond, several other memoirs co-authored with Holocaust and as well as Cosmopolitans: A Social and Cultural History of the Jews of the San Francisco Bay Area, among others. He is currently serving on the New Lehrhaus Board of Directors.

Judy earned her Master’s Degree and was ordained as Rabbi in 1984. From 1984 – 1991 she served Temple Beth Hillel in Richmond, then taught Jewish Studies at the University of San Francisco and joined Temple Isaiah in Lafayette in 1992, serving the congregation until 2018. She has a special interest in the study and teaching of Mussar, Jewish feminist studies, the development of new rituals for life cycle events, liturgical poetry and modern Hebrew literature.

Eleanor (Ellie) received her doctorate from the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, in 2018, with a dissertation focused on Jewish culture festivals in Polish small towns.  For thirteen years prior to that, she directed the Bay Area-based Jewish Music Festival. Currently an independent scholar, she has recently taught courses on Jewish music, Polish-Jewish relations, and Israel/Palestine (where she worked as an educator and journalist from 1982-1990).

David was the CEO of Jewish LearningWorks from 2007 until he retired in 2020. Previously he played a leading role in the international movement to rescue Jews in the USSR. David serves on the Board of Directors of New Lehrhaus.

Rachel has been member of the team that resurrected Lehrhaus Judaica as New Lehrhaus. She had taught for Lehrhaus Judaica in its first decade and organized day-long events for a decade starting with “Bible by the Bay” and expanding to “Lehrhaus 360.” She worked int the Bay Area Jewish community in various capacities for three decades. She is the author of Women and Jewish Law, Growing Up Below Sea Level: A Kibbutz Childhood, a memoir, Lost and Found, a historical novel, and jointly with her husband, David Biale, Aerograms Across the Ocean: A Love Story in Letters.

Jim moved to the Bay Area in 1995 and has been active in the Jewish community since his arrival. In 2001 he founded Pacific Arabic, a language school in downtown San Francisco. He served as executive director there until 2020, while also teaching Standard and Moroccan Arabic. He’s also taught Arabic and Comparative Semitics at several Jewish organizations. He spent four years in the Puerto Rico Jewish community and founded Language Satellite there, where he designed and led professional development seminars in business and legal communications. He also served as caller for San Juan Squares, the only square dance club in Puerto Rico.