Instructors

Parenting Through a Jewish Lens Faculty

Margie Bogdanow, LICSW, received her masters of social work from Simmons College and her BA in Russian language and literature from Brandeis University. Margie has worked for over thirty years with parents and educators in a variety of settings with the goal of making a difference in the lives of children. She co-founded and served as co-executive director of Parenting Resource Associates in Lexington, MA. She has also been the associate director of the Early Childhood Institute at Hebrew College. She is currently employed as a national Youth Specialist for the Union for Reform Judaism and serves as a consultant to the Youth Educator Initiative of Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston. Along with other of her community involvements, she recently completed her term as president of Temple Isaiah in Lexington, MA. She lives in Cambridge, MA.

Sabrina Burger was born in Madrid, Spain. She lived in Israel for 12 years, where she studied English literature and linguistics at Hebrew University and attended the Bezalel School of Art and Design. She studied rabbinic texts and Hasidic philosophy at the Nishmat Center for Advanced Torah Studies and Midreshet Bat Ayin. Sabrina has taught for Ikkarim, Pathways, Ma'ayan, and in private classes, where she integrates Torah, art and parenting skills.

Judy Elkin is a long-time Jewish educator and a certified personal and professional coach, working with individuals, couples, and professional teams. As a Jewish educator Judy has worked with adolescents, parents, parent educators, teachers and graduate students, and was the founding director of Ramah Family Camp.

Leslie Gordon has served as a congregational rabbi in Alexandria VA and Lowell MA. In addition to teaching for Ikkarim, her work in recent years has centered on reaching out to new, newly educated and potential Jews. She has taught in the conversion program of the Jewish Discovery Institute and worked on family holiday programming and adult education at Temple Aliyah in Needham since 1998.

David Jaffe is the school chaplain at Gann Academy: The New Jewish High School and the founder and dean of The Kirva Institute for Torah and Spiritual Practice. A graduate of the Columbia University School of Social Work and the Jewish Theological Seminary Communal Service program, David received his rabbinic ordination from the Bat Ayin Yeshiva in Israel. David is a veteran Ikkarim instructor and has taught widely throughout the Boston community in such programs as LEADS, B'not Torah and Ma'ayan. He lives in Cambridge with his wife Janette, their two boys, Tani (9) and Binyamin (7) and their charismatic cat, Bugsy.

Daniel Liben received his rabbinic ordination at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1983 and has served as the spiritual leader of Temple Israel of Natick since 1991. A prolific teacher, he is a recipient of the Bureau of Jewish Education's Keter Torah Award for his work in family education.

Layah Kranz Lipsker is a dynamic Jewish educator, writer, and lecturer, with twenty years of teaching experience in Jewish mysticism and biblical texts. Mrs. Lipsker, 42, is the primary instructor for the Jewish Learning Institute in Swampscott, MA, and lectures nationwide on topics ranging from Talmudic Ethics to Kaballah. Layah engages her students with wisdom and wit and challenges them to consider classical Jewish texts in modern terms. Her signature program, Jewish Woman's Day of Learning, inspires women of all backgrounds to add their voices to thousands of years of Jewish tradition. Layah's passionate teaching style is enhanced by her own spiritual journey; from a child growing up in a Chassidic home to a modern feminist and mother of six. Layah is currently working on a new book, "Parenting Lessons from G-d," and on a website to support women trying to obtain a Jewish divorce, www.getyourget.com. She lives with her family on Boston's North Shore.

Natan Margalit was raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, studied anthropology at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, made aliya, and studied for many years in Israeli yeshivot. He received rabbinic ordination at The Jerusalem Seminary in 1990 and earned a PhD in Talmud from UC Berkeley in 2001. He has held teaching positions at Bard College, the Reconstuctionist Rabbinical College and the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College in Boston. Natan is spiritual leader of The Greater Washington Coalition for Jewish Life, in western Connecticut. He is president of Organic Torah, Inc., a non-profit organization that fosters holistic thinking about Judaism, environment and society. Natan co-founded LoKo, a co-op for bringing local, kosher, free-range poultry meat to the Boston area. He has written and taught for many years on Judaism and the environment, innovative approaches to Jewish texts, Jewish mysticism and spirituality, and gender and Judaism. He lives in Newton, MA, with his wife Ilana and sons, Nadav and Eiden.

Jacob Meskin is Academic Director of the Me'ah and Ikkarim programs at Hebrew College. In addition to being Assistant Professor of Jewish Thought and Education at the College, he is also the Ruderman Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies at Northeastern University for 2009-2010. He received his PhD from Princeton University and has taught at Rutgers University, Princeton University, Yeshiva University and Williams College. He is one of the co-authors of the Ikkarim curriculum, and both trains faculty for and teaches in the Me'ah program.

Beth Naditch attended Brandeis University as an undergraduate. She was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1999, also earning a Masters Degree in Jewish Education from that institution. Since that time, she has taught Jewish adults in many formal and informal settings, as close to home as the Kesher Parent Learning program at Temple Israel in Boston, and as far away as Warsaw, Poland. Rabbi Naditch is a member of the faculty of the DeLeT/MAT program at the Mandel Center for Jewish Education at Brandeis University, where she teaches Jewish text to future day school teachers. Along with her educational work, Rabbi Naditch completed intensive chaplaincy training after rabbinical school, and was certified as a chaplain in 2003. She developed pastoral volunteer training programs for Hebrew Senior Life and Temple Beth Elohim in Wellesley, in which she teaches the art and skills of pastoral care. Rabbi Naditch, her husband, and their three young sons live in Newton.

Benjamin Samuels of Congregation Shaarei Tefillah in Newton is co-curriculum designer, and an educational consultant and instructor for Ikkarim. He received his rabbinic ordination and masters degree from Yeshiva University and is an alumnus of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship program. He is a doctoral candidate at Boston University in Science, Philosophy and Religion. He serves on the faculty of Me'ah and Ma'ayan, and is a Genesis scholar for Combined Jewish Philanthropies.

Ronit Ziv-Kreger is principal at Ziv-Kreger & Associates and has been serving as a consultant to innovative initiatives in Day Schools and Congregational Schools since 1998 in both Israel and the Boston area. In the past three years Dr. Ziv-Kreger has been serving as consultant for CJP’s Innovators Community of Practice (CoP) initiative to help revitalize and reinvent supplementary education in the Boston area. Ronit is a veteran Ikkarim teacher and teaches widely throughout the greater Boston area. She is an instructor of programs such as Me’ah and ADAMAH at Isabella Freedman. She is a graduate of the Pardes Educators Program and received her PhD from MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

Julie Zupan attended Tufts University for her undergraduate degree and received ordination from Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion in New York in 1999. She has served as a congregational rabbi and as an elder care chaplain and currently serves as the Jewish Family Educator for the Early Learning Centers of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Boston (JCCGB). She lives in Sharon with her husband, Rabbi Joseph Meszler, and their two school-age children.