Workshops to Meet this Moment

Mollie has over 10 years experience teaching in a variety of Jewish educational settings – from formal classroom teaching to nature education, theatre education to collaborative philanthropy education. She enjoys being in the field, as well as building programs and trainings to support others. Mollie holds a double Masters in Midrash and Jewish Experiential Education from the Jewish Theological Seminary, a BA in Religion from Bard College, and is a graduate
of M²’s Senior Educators Cohort. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband and children.

Dr. Mijal Bitton is a public intellectual and a spiritual leader. Mijal serves as the Rosh Kehilla (communal leader) of the Downtown Minyan community in Lower Manhattan. She is a Visiting Researcher at NYU Wagner and the Director of the first national study of Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews in the United States. Mijal earned her doctorate from New York University, is an alumna of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship, and was featured in the New York Jewish Week’s “36 under 36” in 2018 as a “public intellectual” with ‘public values.” Mijal is a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, a Sacks Scholar, a Maimonides Fund fellow, and a New Pluralist Field Builder. She lives in New York with her husband, Rabbi Sion Setton, and their two children.

Shoshana Boyd Gelfand has been part of the Pears Foundation team in London since 2011, where she currently serves as Director of Leadership and Learning. Prior to that, she was CEO of the Movement for Reform Judaism in the UK and Vice President of the Wexner Heritage Foundation in New York. Shoshana is a founding faculty member of Faith in Leadership, Visiting Scholar at Sarum College and Visiting Research Fellow at St. Benet’s Hall, Oxford. She serves as Vice Chair of the International Jewish Committee on Inter-religious Consultations(IJCIC)and also serves as board chair of OLAM (a network of Jewish and Israeli organizations working in the fields of global service, international development, and humanitarian aid). Shoshana broadcasts regularly on BBC Radio’s “Something Understood” and “Pause for Thought” programs, and presents frequently at conferences on issues around faith, identity and leadership. Shoshana was ordained as a rabbi in 1997 at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where she also received her Doctor of Divinity honoris causa.

As Managing Director at OU-NCSY, Yoni oversees regional growth with a focus on people, strategy, and transformation. He consults internationally, helping executives and their organizations transform, lead change, and build thriving, people-focused cultures. Yoni holds a BA in psychology from York University and an MS in Organizational Leadership from Colorado State University Global.

Debbi Cooper is the Senior Director of M²’s Values in Action initiative, a JCRIF-funded initiative that aims to equip educators with training and resources to navigate contemporary challenges through a lens of Jewish values. Previously Debbi served as the Director of Engagement for PJ Library and Associate Vice President, Community Outreach & Engagement of the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago. She is the immediate past Chair of the Board for Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School, a pluralistic Jewish Day School in Chicago. She is a graduate of M²’s Senior Educators Cohort and a current 18×18 fellow.

Debbi graduated from Washington University in St. Louis and has a Master’s in Public Administration/Non-profit management from George Mason University. Debbi lives in Chicago with her husband, Aaron, and their three children: Gabe, Judah, and Noah. She schleps her family on hikes and bikes, makes big dinners upon their return and can often be found hiding out with a good book.

Brown RISD Hillel and Brown University Providence, RI,
Pedagogies of Wellbeing Research Fellowship alumna

Rabbi Michelle Dardashti was ordained and received a Masters in Jewish Education from the Jewish Theological Seminary. She is trained in Congregation Based Community Organizing and came to Brown after serving as the Marshall T. Meyer Fellow at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in Manhattan and Director of Community Engagement at Temple Beth El in Stamford. The daughter of an American folk-singer/teacher and an Iranian-born cantor, RMD (as she’s known on campus) was raised on a brand of Judaism which is multicultural, meta-denominational, musical and global – she became a rabbi to share the gifts her parents’ eclectic Judaism afforded her: passion, hope, wonder, gratitude, empathy, responsibility and joy; she came to Brown to nourish a Judaism that’s broad and deep and engaged with the world. She has spent time living and working in the Jewish community of Montevideo, Uruguay as well as four years in Jerusalem, where she was a student at the Hebrew University, a Dorot Fellow and volunteer and staff member at a number of NGOs working in the realms of democracy, dialogue and cross-cultural education. In her eight+ years on College Hill, Rabbi Dardashti has birthed a number of initiatives that critically explore allyship, activism and contemporary American Jewish positionality, including HIRAJ and the Narrow Bridge Project. She has also led monthly New Moon Gatherings for women across campus, created weekly platforms for Jewishly Inspired Meditation (“JIM, a workout for the soul)” and, in collaboration with Brown students, founded Kivun, a platform for musical and soulful prayer.