Emma Missouri, Director of Operations

Emma is the Director of Operations and feels privileged to work for this LGBTQI Jewish organization. Coming out in 1977 in Northampton, Massachusetts, she was part of that LGBT community for 17 years.  She spent 25 years working as a theater director and performer. Her work experience also includes managing not-for-profit organizations, running her own organic, fair trade coffee company and teaching college.  She moved back to New York City in 2007 because she loves the Big Apple.  She is a proud member of Kolot Chayeinu Synagogue in Brooklyn, a LGBTI-friendly shul with a lesbian rabbi.  She is thrilled to be a part of a vibrant spiritual community.  In October 2010, she went on a human rights mission to Israel. She is pictured here (in the lavender shirt) with Uma, the president of the Women’s Association in Beit Surik in the West Bank.

David Dunn Bauer, Bay Area Director of Programming

Rabbi David Dunn Bauer is the founder and coordinator of “The Jewish Queer Sexual Ethics Project” at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry at Pacific School of Religion. With over 20 years of professional theatre experience, 9 years in the congregational rabbinate, and 20 years of yoga practice, and years of academic study on sexuality and spirituality, David is a unique pastoral counselor, ritual leader, community leader, scholar, artist, and writer who works comfortably with people of all faiths and ages.

He earned his BA in Theatre Studies and English Literature at Yale University, studied Talmud at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem, and received his rabbinical ordination from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. In 2011 he became the first Jew to earn the Certificate in Sexuality and Religion from Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. He interned at Congregation CBST in NYC, and served as a student rabbi at both congregations and nursing homes for three years of his rabbinical studies. From 2003 to 2010 he served as the rabbi and spiritual leader of the Jewish Community of Amherst, in Amherst Massachusetts.

With Michael Cohen he created Celebrating the Body Judaic – a Body Electric retreat for Gay and Bisexual Jewish men – and he has taught about eros and spirituality for Jewish queer, and retirement communities around the United States, and at dozens of retreats and workshops. His essay “Man-Boy and Daddy-God: The SM Dynamic in Ezekiel’s Call and Commissioning” is being published this year in Queer Religion, Vol. 2, edited by Donald Boisvert and Jay Emerson Johnson. Based in San Francisco, he serves as the Bay Area Director of Programming for Nehirim

Marlene Rachelle, Director of Programming for New York Metropolitan Area

Marlene Rachelle is the Director of Programming for New York Metropolitan Area .  She recently received an MA in Jewish Education from the Jewish Theological Seminary with a concentration in informal and communal education.  Marlene went back to school after leaving her position as Senior Producer at MTV Networks where she had worked for over ten years. She was an Education Intern at the JCC in Manhattan’s Family Life and Community Programs department where she designed and marketed programs for the LGBTQ community.

Sasha T. Goldberg is the Assistant Director of Nehirim. A Jewish scholar, educator, and social justice activist by trade, Sasha brings a unique passion for creating radical Jewish programming, and building community around the intersections of Judaism and various cultural, social, sexual, and religious identities. Prior to joining Nehirim in 2007, she taught grades K-12 in Religious Schools, led Jewish teen retreats, and worked with a wide variety of Jewish organizations in the Bay Area. Sasha holds a Master’s Degree in Judaism from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, where she focused on issues of grief, loss, and pastoral care. In September of 2008, she facilitated Nehirim’s first Grief and Loss group, entied, “Bearing Witness: Sharing Grief in Queer Community.”

In addition to her work at Nehirim, Sasha has a long history of queer advocacy and activism, and, accordingly, has organized conferences, film festivals, fundraisers, workshops, and events, as well as having spoken extensively on sexuality, gender, and identity. Sasha currently serves as President of the Board of Directors for NUJLS, The National Union of Jewish LGBTQQI Students, and as the Programming Chair for Butch Voices 2011.

Sasha hails from the good Midwestern stock of the United States, and has long since made her home in the Bay Area.