Our People
The dedicated individuals who guide, teach, and support New Lehrhaus in our mission to bring students and teachers together in dynamic dialogue.
Board of Directors
Leading with vision and commitment to Jewish learning
Rachel was a member of the team that resurrected Lehrhaus Judaica as New Lehrhaus and served as its executive director for its first four years. 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 in 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, and most recently, And Now Love Can Begin: My Parents' Imagined Memoir.
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.
Maxine Epstein, LCSW, recently assumed the role of Northern California and the Pacific Northwest Director of major gifts for American Friends of Magen David Adom. Maxine has worked in nonprofit management for more than 35 years with a focus on financial resource development, major gifts, strategic analysis, leadership, and helping individuals reach their philanthropic goals.
Maxine is a lifelong learner, collaborator, and fundraiser for strengthening Jewish education in our communities. She has a passion for Jewish education, culture, and learning which has fueled her desire to build and strengthen our Jewish community.
Maxine is soon to be married to her lifelong partner, Geraldine Barr whom she met at a Jewish summer camp over 50 plus years ago. They have lived together in the Bay Area and raised twin daughters Adina and Ma'ayan
Sue Fishkoff is the former editor of J. The Jewish News of Northern California, serving in that position from 2011 to 2022. She has been a journalist for 35 years, most of that time writing and editing for the Jewish media, notably The Jerusalem Post, JTA and J. A native of New Jersey, she received her BA in history from Cornell in 1979, and her MA in Soviet politics from Columbia in 1982. Sue is the author of two books, The Rebbe's Army (Schocken, 2003) and Kosher Nation (Schocken, 2010), and is a dual Israeli-American citizen. She lives in Oakland with her cats and books.
" alt="Jim Gilbert"/>Jim is the former Executive Director of the UC Berkeley Law Executive Education program. During his seven years at the university, he built and led a team responsible for developing and executing revenue generating online and in-person professional development courses for practicing attorneys. Prior to his time at UC Berkeley, Jim ran a business consulting practice, led business development and marketing teams for several Silicon Valley tech companies, co-founded two software startups, and worked as a land use consultant. Jim previously served on the boards of Wilderness Torah, the East Bay School for Boys, and the Orange County Jewish Community Scholar Program. He was also President of the Meadow Park Foundation.
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.
A life-long resident of the Bay Area, Yoel is Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Beth El of Berkeley. He was ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1985 and later received his Ph.D. at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. He researches, teaches and writes about history and innovation in Jewish liturgy, liberal Jewish theology and decision making and other topics. His book on the history of Jewish liturgy, The Three Blessings: Boundaries, Censorship, and Identity in Jewish Liturgy, was published by Oxford University Press in 2011.
Eitan Lev Kensky is the Reinhard Family Curator of Judaica and Hebraica Collections, Humanities Resource Group at Stanford University. Previously, he served for 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 is a film festival producer, programmer and educator. She joined Founding Director Deborah Kaufman at the groundbreaking San Francisco Jewish Film Festival in its second year. 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.
In 2016 she produced her first film, a 74-minute documentary about an iconoclastic artist, PLASTIC MAN: the artful life of Jerry Ross Barrish, that screened in film festivals across the US and in Germany. It was broadcast on public television's KQED –TV Channel 9 in 2017 and Israel TV in 2016.
She received a double Masters in Social Work and Jewish Community Studies from the University of Southern California and the Hebrew Union College (MA, MSW, 1976) and an Honorary Doctorate from the Hebrew Union College in 2001.
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.
