Robert Bank

Robert Bank is a lawyer, activist, and Executive Vice President for American Jewish World Service. Prior to joining AJWS, Robert served as Chief Operating Officer at Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), a national AIDS advocacy, service, and education organization.

Marla Brettschneider

Marla Brettschneider is Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of New Hampshire with a joint appointment in Political Science and Women’s Studies. Marla has written widely on Jewish politics, queer and other diversity matters; her most recent book The Family Flamboyant: Race Politics, Queer Families, Jewish Lives (SUNY 2006) won an IPPY (Independent Book Publishers Award) in the GLBT category.

Gregg Drinkwater

Gregg Drinkwater is the Deputy Director for Research and Special Projects at Keshet, a national Jewish LGBT organization. Prior to this role, Drinkwater was the founding Executive Director of Jewish Mosaic and also worked in nonprofit communications, as a journalist in Russia, and for the web sites Gay.com and PlanetOut.com. He is the co-editor, with Dr. David Shneer and Rabbi Joshua Lesser, of the book Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Bible (NYU Press, 2009).

Noach Dzmura

Noach Dzmura is the editor of the 2011 Lambda Literary Award winning anthology, Balancing on the Mechitza: Transgender in Jewish Community, North Atlantic Books, 2010. He serves as adjunct faculty at the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice, and as Communications Director at Congregation Chochmat HaLev in Berkeley, CA. He also directs Jewish Transitions, a consultancy that develops and implements training programs for Jewish organizations interested in developing inclusive chevra kadisha and conversion practices, and also provides guidance to transgender people seeking transgender-specific knowledge about the conversion process and traditional burial.

Karen Lee Erlichman

Karen Lee Erlichman, MSS, LCSW is in private practice in San Francisco, where she provides psychotherapy, spiritual direction and supervision.  Karen is a member of the faculty at the Institute for Transpersonal Psychology, Previously she served as the Bay Area Director of Jewish Mosaic: The National Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity. Karen is also a consultant for the National Welcoming Synagogues Project, and a member of the Advisory Board of the Coalition of Welcoming Congregations of the Bay Area.

Alex Greenbaum

Born and bred in the modern Orthodox Jewish community in London, Alex Greenbaum is vice chair of Washington DC JCC’s LGBT program, GLOE. In the last couple of years, he has become increasingly involved in Jewish community organizing. He also volunteers with adults with disabilities and with the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington. A macroeconomist in his professional life, Alex works with developing-country governments and private sector groups to establish effective economic policy.

Idit Klein

Idit has served as Keshet’s Executive Director since 2001. In this capacity, she produced the documentary, Hineini: Coming Out in a Jewish High School. While living in Jerusalem, Idit was a GLBT rights activist and worked in early organizing around the creation of the Jerusalem Open House. She graduated magna cum laude from Yale and received a Master’s in Education from UMASS Amherst. Idit was among eight recipients of the 2003-2005 Joshua Venture Fellowship for Jewish social entrepreneurs. She is a past fellow and board member of the Jewish Organizing Initiative and was honored by the Jewish Women’s Archive with a Women Who Dared award.

Rabba Debra Kolodny

Rabba Debra Kolodny is the Executive Director of an international organization dedicated to inspir(it)ing the Jewish world: ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal. She has been teaching Torah for over a decade and practicing tai ji for fourteen years. She has worked with faith-based, GLBT and civil rights organizations as well as interfaith coalitions, labor unions and other social justice non-profits for over 30 years. In 2000 she published an anthology entitled Blessed Bi Spirit: Bisexual People of Faith. Daily prayer, meditation and tai ji helps make life a glorious adventure!

Rabbi Joshua Lesser

Rabbi Joshua Lesser leads Atlanta’s growing Congregation Bet Haverim as a place dedicated to celebrating all aspects of Jewish life and creating a spiritual home that is accessible to those who have not connected in other settings. At Bet Haverim, he has worked with a wide variety of groups and coalitions to build a better community for Atlanta, including the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta’s Task Force on Healing and Spirituality. In partnership with the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta and Jewish Family & Career Services, he founded The Rainbow Center, a place of support and information for GLBTQ people, as well as their families.

Rabbi Dev Noily

Rabbi Dev Noily has worked for fifteen years as a Jewish educator, prayer leader, liturgist and lifecycle facilitator.  She is currently active in LGBT interfaith work and intra-Jewish dialogue work, facilitating difficult conversations in Jewish communities about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  She was ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Philadelphia in 2009, where she received the Dvora Bartnoff Memorial Prize for Spiritually-Motivated Social Action.

Arthur Slepian

Arthur Slepian is the founder and Executive Director of A Wider Bridge, an organization that seeks to create greater connection between the North American Jewish and Israeli LGBTQ communities, and provide an LGBTQ pathway for greater engagement with Israel.  Arthur serves on the Board of Trustees of the Jewish Community Federation of the San Francisco Bay Area, and is the Chair of the  LGBT Alliance of the Federation.

Rabbi Julia Watts Belser