Speaker Bios
(List in formation; as of November 17, 2008)

Rabbi Rebecca Alpert, Temple University
Rabbi Rebecca T. Alpert is Associate Professor of Religion and Women’s Studies at Temple University. She is the co-author of Exploring Judaism: A Reconstructionist Approach, author of Like Bread on the Seder Plate: Jewish Lesbians and the Transformation of Tradition and Whose Torah? A Concise Guide to Progressive Judaism and editor of Voices of the Religious Left: A Contemporary Sourcebook as well as numerous articles. She teaches in the areas of religion and contemporary social issues: sexuality, the politics of race and gender, and medical ethics. She is currently at work on a book on Jews in Black Baseball. http://www.temple.edu/religion/faculty/alpert.htmlDiane Balser, Brit Tzedek V’ShalomDIANE BALSER, Interim Executive Director, and is currently co-chair of Brit Tzedek’s Advocacy and Public Policy Committee. She is currently a professor of Women’s Studies at Boston University. From 1983-1994, Balser founded, built and directed the Women’s Legislative Network of Massachusetts and served as the lobbyist in the State House for the network¹s sister organization, the Women¹s Lobby.Jan Barry, Veterans For Peace.

DIANE BALSER, Brit Tsedek V’shalom
Dr. Balser is Interim Executive Director of Brit Tsedek. A Jewish leader and activist on the issues of Israeli-Palestinian peace and women’s rights, Dr. Balser has served in various capacities at Brit Tzedek since its inception, including representative at the 2003 signing of the Geneva Accords. She is the author of “Plotting the Middle Path to Israeli-Palestinian Peace: The Role of American Jews” in the book Righteous Indignation: A Jewish Call for Justice. Dr. Balser teaches Women’s Studies at Boston University, has served nationally as a lobbyist for women’s issues and is credited with founding and building a model mass network in Massachusetts representing public policy issues for women and families, training thousands of women in effect participation in the legislative process.

Jan Barry, poet and writer
Jan Barry is the author of A Citizen’s Guide to Grassroots Campaigns, Earth Songs: New & Selected Poems; and coeditor of Winning Hearts & Minds: War Poems by Vietnam Veterans, among other works. A co-founder of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, he is a member of Veterans for Peace. For more information: http://earthairwater.blogspot.com/

Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street
Jeremy Ben-Ami is Executive Director of J Street and JStreetPAC, the political voice of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement. He has nearly twenty-five years of experience in government, politics and communications, in the United States and internationally. He was Policy Director for Howard Dean’s presidential campaign and worked for President Bill Clinton as Deputy Domestic Policy Advisor. He has been Director of Communications for the New Israel Fund and is on the Board of Americans for Peace Now. Ben-Ami was most recently Senior Vice President of Fenton Communications, a public interest communications firm. Ben-Ami holds a law degree from New York University and is a graduate of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Relations at Princeton University.

Stacey Bosworth, Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring
Stacey Bosworth is a member of the National Executive Board of The Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring and Chair of its Program Committee. She serves as Associate Executive Director of The Joyful Heart Foundation, a non-profit committed to creating and sustaining innovative education and empowerment programs for survivors of sexual assault, domestic violence and child abuse. Stacey has worked for The Sundance Institute and Festival, The Rainforest Foundation US and serves on the board of The Human Rights Education Center of Utah and The Brooklyn Jewish Film Festival.

Lawrence Bush, Jewish Currents
Lawrence Bush has been a creative force on the American Jewish scene for thirty years as a writer, editor and visual artist. He is the editor of Jewish Currents, a progressive bimonthly published by The Workmen’s Circle, and was the founding editor of Reconstructionism Today. His books include Waiting for God: The Spiritual Explorations of a Reluctant Atheist, BESSIE: A Novel of Love and Revolution, and American Torah Toons: 54 Illustrated Commentaries, among others. His essays, fiction and artworks have appeared in the New York Times, Mad magazine, Tikkun, Reform Judaism, In These Times, The Reconstructionist, the Village Voice, and anthologized in Best Jewish Writing, 2003, The 54th Century, Hallucinogens: A Reader, and A Mentsh Among Men.

Leslie Cagan, United for Peace and Justice
Since 2002, Leslie has been the National Coordinator of United for Peace and Justice, the nation’s largest grassroots antiwar coalition. She brings to this work 45 years of organizing experience in peace and social justice movements. Her coalition skills have mobilized hundreds of thousands in many of the nation’s largest demonstrations including: the million person June 1982 Nuclear Disarmament demonstration in NYC; the historic lesbian/gay rights march on Washington in 1987; and the largest mobilizations against the war in Iraq over the past five and a half years. Leslie was Field Director in the 1988 Dinkins Mayoral race in NYC and played a major role in winning back the nation’s first listener-sponsored network - Pacifica Radio. Her writings appear in 8 anthologies, and in scores of journals, newspapers and on-line outlets.

Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin, Baltimore Jewish Environmental Network
Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin is the Director of the Baltimore JewishEnvironmental Network and General Consultant to COEJL, the Coalitionon the Environment and Jewish Life.

Jeff Cohen, Park Center for Independent Media
Jeff Cohen, media critic and lecturer, is founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, where he is an associate professor of journalism. His latest book is “Cable News Confidential: My Misadventures in Corporate Media.” He has been a TV commentator at CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, and was senior producer of MSNBC’s Phil Donahue primetime show until it was terminated three weeks before the Iraq invasion. Cohen founded the media watch group FAIR in 1986. His columns on media issues have been published online at such websites as HuffingtonPost, CommonDreams and Alternet—and in dozens of dailies, including USA Today, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Atlanta Constitution, and Miami Herald.

Penny Coleman, author “Flashback: Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, Suicide and the Costs of War”
Penny Coleman is the widow of a Vietnam veteran who took his own life after coming home from the war. In 2006, she published Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide and the Lessons of War (Beacon). She is a columnist for AlterNet, writing and speaking regularly on veterans’ issues. In December, she testified before the House Veterans Affairs Committee on the subject of soldier and veteran suicides. With support from the Nation Institute, she is currently investigating the ways in which traumatized veterans disappear from public awareness though incarceration, institutionalization, addiction, and social marginalization.

Adrienne Cooper, Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring
Adrienne Cooper is Executive Officer for External Affairs of The Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring and Director of its Center for Cultural Jewish Life. She is also a musician, internationally recognized for her innovations in Yiddish culture, as singer and recording artist, mentor and teacher of a generation of Jewish musicians, translator, lecturer and creator of new works of music theater. She previously served as Assistant Director of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Director of the YIVO/Columbia University Summer Program in Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture, and Program Director/Curator for The Museum of Chinese in the Americas.

Jeffrey Dekro, Founder of the Shefa Fund
Jeffrey Dekro is Senior Vice President for Jewish Funds for Justice and serves on the board of The Shalom Center. In a career of innovative social justice organization building, he founded The Shefa Fund to organize tzedakah for social change and spiritual renewal, later merging it to form Jewish Funds for Justice, initiated the Tzedek Economic Development Campaign, a pooled fund catalyzing American Jewish investments for affordable housing, small business loans and vital social services and conceived and is President of TSEDEC's outgrowth, the Isaiah Funds, a national interreligious initiative that makes loans and access to capital grants for Gulf Coast redevelopment post-Katrina/Rita. Jeffrey is co-author of three books, including with Larry Bush, Jews, Money and Social Responsibility: Developing a "Torah of Money" for Contemporary Life.

Liza Featherstone, journalist and contributing editor to The Nation
Liza Featherstone is a journalist based in New York City. Her work on student and youth activism has been published in The Nation, Lingua Franca, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Left Business Observer, Dissent, The Sydney Morning Herald and Columbia Journalism Review. Featherstone has also written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsday, In These Times, Ms., Salon, Nerve, US, Nylon and Rolling Stone. She is the co-author of Students Against Sweatshops: The Making of a Movement (Verso, 2002) and author of Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Worker’s Rights at Wal-Mart (Basic, 2004).

Rabbi Marla Feldman, Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism
Rabbi Marla J. Feldman is Director of the Commission on Social Action of Reform Judaism, working with the Movement’s Religious Action Center in Washington, D.C., to educate and mobilize the American Jewish community on legislative and social justice concerns. Rabbi and lawyer, Feldman represents the Reform Movement in coalitions including the Save Darfur Coalition, Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Rabbis for Human Rights – North America, and the Inter-Agency Task Force on Israeli Arab Issues. Rabbi Feldman is the author of Reform Movement action manuals, including Speak Truth to Power and K’hilat Tzedek: Creating Communities of Justice. Her articles and Op Eds have appeared in Jewish publications and newspapers throughout the country.

Gary Ferdman, Common Cause
Gary Ferdman is Director of Major Gifts for Common Cause, having previously served as Executive Director and Membership and Development Coordinator of Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities/TrueMajority, which he co-founded with Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s. In a career spanning three decades in non-profits he has held positions at Executives for National Security, American Jewish Committee, United Jewish Appeal, United Way and Citizen Action. Gary currently serves on the boards of The Shalom Center, The Highlander Center for Teaching Social Responsibility, and Prepare Tomorrow’s Parents, which he co-founded. He regularly publishes op-eds with his wife, author Myriam Miedzian.

Emmaia Gelman, Center for Working Families.
Emmaia is a long-time activist on housing, policing, AIDS and LGBT rights, as well as democracy issues in Northern Ireland & Palestine. As Senior Policy Organizer at the Center for Working Families, she develops policy to use the state’s leverage to scale up the green economy for climate change, jobs, equitable economic development and housing preservation, building on a coalition among national and community-based environmental justice groups, labor, local workforce development and housing groups, green business and progressive actors in government. She was a co-founder of Jews Against the Occupation, and works with Jews for Racial & Economic Justice.

Amy Goodman, Democracy Now
Amy Goodman is a syndicated columnist, author and the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a national award-winning news program airing daily on 700 radio and television stations in North America. Goodman has written three books with her brother, journalist David Goodman, including NY Times bestsellers Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times, and The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them. Goodman’s reporting on East Timor and Nigeria has won numerous awards. Pioneering the largest public media collaboration in the U.S., Democracy Now! is broadcast on Pacifica, NPR stations, low power FM, College and Community Radio stations as well as Public Access TV and PBS stations.. Democracy Now! is also available at “http://democracynow.org/”democracynow.org.William Hartung, New America Foundation NEED BIOHonorable Elizabeth Holtzman, former Congresswoman, author and attorney.

Cantor Jonathan Gordon, Woodlands Community Temple
Cantor Gordon serves Woodlands Community Temple, in Greenburgh, New York. He has led Westchester residents in public protest of the Iraq War since its inception. His writings on religious and social concerns appear widely in Reform Movement publications, including the first public criticism of the war in Iraq in the Reform press. As a conscientious objector in the Vietnam War, Gordon worked as a reporter on the Southern Courier, a civil rights newspaper in Montgomery, Alabama. Cantor Gordon has distinguished himself as a musician in a wide range of repertoire, as folksinger and guitar protégée of the late Dave Van Ronk, as well as in repertoire ranging from opera and oratorio to traditional Cantorial recitative.

Honorable Elizabeth Holtzman, former Congresswoman, author and attorney
Elizabeth Holtzman serves as the co-chair of Herrick’s Government Relations Practice, concentrating her practice in government relations at the federal, state and local levels, and in litigation. She joined Herrick after 20 years in government, eight years as a U.S. Congresswoman, winning national attention for her role on the House Judiciary committee during Watergate. She chaired the Immigration and Refugees Subcommittee and dealt with foreign governments over refugee issues. Liz was subsequently elected District Attorney of Kings County (Brooklyn), the only woman ever elected DA in New York City, serving for eight years, and elected Comptroller of New York City.
She was appointed by President Clinton to the Nazi and Japanese Imperial War Criminal Records Interagency Working Group, overseeing the declassification of the U.S. government’s secret Nazi war crimes files.

Mark Johnson, Fellowship of Reconciliation/ Olive Branch Interfaith Partners for Peace
Mark C. Johnson, Ph.D., is executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation/USA . Much of his professional career was spent in the YMCA and as a volunteer in environmental, arts, peace and social justice organizations. He was executive director of the Silver Bay Association, a YMCA conference and training center, and did alternative service as a conscientious objector in Lebanon, living and teaching in Beirut. He is part of the Alliance for Middle East Peace and, as staff of YMCA USA, supports leadership and training programs for young adults at the Jerusalem International YMCA. Mark serves on the boards of Associated Solo Artists/Creative Leaps International, Schools That Can (a national alliance of public, private, independent and parochial charter schools), the International Student Exchange Program, and the advisory board of Girls Learn International.

Rokhl Kafrissen, Jewish Currents
Rokhl Kafrissen is a writer and cultural worker, recently leaving the world of corporate law to become the online editor of Jewish Currents. In addition to writing the Rootless Cosmopolitan feature for Jewish Currents, she writes about Yiddish and Jewish culture for publications worldwide and is fast becoming the ‘go-to’ voice on the growing movement of young Diaspora Nationalists. She is at work on her book, ‘The Myth of the Yiddish Atlantis’, a deconstruction of the North American Jewish Cultural narrative.

Esther Kaplan, The Nation Institute
Esther Kaplan is a Brooklyn-based radio and print journalist. She is investigative editor at The Nation Institute and has written for The Nation, The American Prospect, The Village Voice, and other publications. She co-hosts Beyond the Pale, a weekly radio show covering Jewish culture and politics on WBAI/New York, and produces The Communique, which covers labor and public policy on WNYE/New York. She is the author of With God on Their Side: George W. Bush and the Christian Right (New Press).

Robert Kaplan, Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring
Robert Kaplan is President of The Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring and its former Executive Director. Retired physicist and business leader, Kaplan was co-founder and VP for Research and Development of Quantronix Corp (laser research and manufacture advancing the development of the semiconductor industry), co-founder and President of Lasers For Medicine, and President of Pilkington Medical Research. He serves on the Executive Committee of The Jewish Labor Committee and on the Board of Directors of The Forward Association. He is past President of the WC/AR MultiCare Center and The National Yiddish Theater-Folksbiene.. An activist in issues of gun control, Kaplan is Treasurer of Manhattan Chapter of the Million Mom March and organizer of the Children’s March Against Gun Violence to the US Capitol.

Rabbi Peter Knobel, Central Conference of American Rabbis
Rabbi Peter S. Knobel is President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) and the Senior Rabbi at Beth Emet The Free Synagogue in Evanston, Illinois. He has served on the Board of many local and national institutions including Association of Reform Zionists of America, Union for Reform Judaism, American Jewish Committee, Jewish United Fund, and the Council for the Parliament of the World’s Religions. He is the Past President of the Chicago Board of Rabbis and the Chicago Association of Reform Rabbis. Rabbi Knobel has taught at HUC-JIR, Spertus College, and Yale University, is the author of numerous papers, served as Chair of the New Siddur Editorial Committee for the Central Conference of American Rabbis and he is Director of the Resource Center for Jewish Health Care Ethics.

Charles Komanoff, Carbon Tax Center
Charles Komanoff is widely known for his path-breaking work as an energy-economist and environmental activist. His work on the economics of nuclear power led to his serving as expert witness in New York, California, Texas, Florida and a dozen other states. In the mid-eighties Komanoff “re-founded” the New York-area bicycling-advocacy group Transportation Alternatives and spearheaded its activism for cycling, walking and transit. His Ending the Oil Age is a visionary plan for collectively guided oil conservation. He is co-founder of the Carbon Tax Center, to advance equitable, efficient carbon-emissions pricing. Komanoff’s articles have appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times, New York Review of Books, and on blogs including Gristmill and Streetsblog. His current work focuses on the benefits of both carbon taxing and road pricing.

Rabbi Ellen Lippmann, Kolot Chayeinu/Voices of Our Lives
Ellen Lippmann is founder and rabbi of Kolot Chayeinu/Voices of Our Lives and former East Coast Director of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, and of the Jewish Women’s Program at the 14th Street Y in Manhattan. Rabbi Lippmann serves on the Executive Committee and Board of Rabbis for Human Rights-North America, and on the board of The Shalom Center. In late 2006, she chaired the first North American Rabbinic Conference on Judaism & Human Rights, and serves on the rabbinic councils of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and Brit Tzedek vShalom. Rabbi Lippmann was ordained by Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, and received the degree of Master of Hebrew Letters.

Myriam Miedzian, author “Boys Will Be Boys: Breaking the Link Between Masculinity and Violence”
Dr. Miedzian is a social philosopher who writes on political and cultural issues, with a primary focus on gender and violence. She is the author of Boys Will Be Boys: Breaking the Link between Masculinity. Her articles and Op Eds have appeared in Social Research, The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, Boston Globe, and Miami Herald, and she blogs frequently on The Huffington Post. Dr. Miedzian has lectured widely on how to change the socialization of boys to decrease violence, testifying before the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Children, Youth and Families, and speaking at the Barcelona International Citizens Meeting. She is frequently interviewed on TV and radio and was the subject of a Time Magazine interview. Dr. Miedzian has served on the faculties of Rutgers University, The City University of New York, and Barnard College.Sammie Moshenberg, National Council of Jewish Women.

Sammie Moshenberg,
Director of Washington Operations of the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW).
As head of NCJW’s Washington, DC office, she directs NCJW’s advocacy efforts nationwide and staffs its “Plan A: NCJW’s Campaign for Contraceptive Access.” Ms. Moshenberg represents NCJW on national coalitions concerned with judicial nominations, civil rights, reproductive rights, child care, and First Amendment issues. On behalf of NCJW, she co-chairs the child care task force of the National Council of Women’s Organizations (NCWO) and helped found its New Faces, More Voices – a leadership development project for interns of member organizations. In 1995 and 2003, she lived in South Africa where she worked as a volunteer aide to a member of Parliament, working on the new constitution (1995), and on HIV/AIDS advocacy for the Treatment Action Campaign (2003).

Congressman Jerrold Nadler, (D-NY)
Jerrold Nadler represents New York’s Eighth District, one of the most diverse in the nation. Nadler champions civil rights and liberties, access to health care, support for the arts and protection of the Social Security system. He is Assistant Whip, a senior member of the House Judiciary and Transportation Committees, Chairman of the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties Subcommittee, and has spearheaded opposition to the so-called Federal Marriage Amendment. Former member of the National Governing Council of the American Jewish Congress and a member of the New York Board of the Anti-Defamation League, Nadler’s work on Black-Jewish relations won him the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding’s Racial Harmony Award and his civil liberties battles earned inclusion on the ACLU’s Honor Roll. As policy expert, Nadler is a featured guest on nearly every significant public affairs and news program.

Sue Niederer, Goldstar Families for Peace
Sue Sapir-Niederer became politically involved during the Vietnam era. Her activism was rekindled when her son Seth decided to join the military. In February 2003 she was informed that Seth had been tragically killed in Iraq. She channeled her grief and anger in anti-war rallies and called on government officials to investigate the recruitment practices used on High School and College campuses. Protesting the war, she marched on the White House, stood outside the home of Donald Rumsfeld, marched in Crawford, Texas, and was arrested at a Laura Bush rally. “Because of these efforts, I have attained, a certainly not sought after status as, an “icon” for those parents, relatives, and friends who have lost loved ones in this war. I love America, and am proud to be an American, but it is necessary for me and all those who love this democracy, to stand up, to continue this struggle for justice for all of those who serve or have served in this war.”

Michael Ratner, Center for Constitutional Rights
Michael Ratner is President of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a non-profit legal organization dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Ratner was co-counsel representing Guantanamo Bay detainees in the US Supreme Court in Rasul v. Bush (2004) and Boumediene v. Bush (2008). He is President of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights and author of, among others, The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld, Guantanamo: What the World Should Know and the textbook, International Human Rights Litigation in U. S. Courts. He has taught law at Yale Law School and Columbia University Law School, co-hosts the popular radio program “Law and Disorder” and is included in The National Law Journal’s list of “100 of the Most Influential Lawyers in America.”

Lilly Rivlin, Meretz USA
Lilly Rivlin, 7th generation Jerusalemite, is a writer, filmmaker and activist living in NYC. She is a past president of Meretz USA, and has been an activist since serving as the first female “rosh” of Habonim in Washington, D.C. She is working on a film on writer/political activist and mentsch, Grace Paley. Her film,” Can You Hear Me? Israeli and Palestinian Women Fight for Peace”, has been screened internationally. She has worked as a consultant to organizations and family foundations and, as part of a group of New York Jewish women, she participated in creating the original Women’s Feminist Seder, now replicated throughout the world. Rivlin has facilitated Israeli-Palestinian dialogue groups and she is listed in the “International Encyclopedia of Jewish Women” and “Feminists Who Changed America.”

Rabbi Or Rose, Hebrew College
Rabbi Or Rose is director of Interfaith & Social Justice Initiatives at Hebrew College . He is the co-editor of Righteous Indignation: A Jewish Call for Justice (Jewish Lights), and a member of the editorial committees of Shima and Tikkun. He is currently completing a doctorate at Brandeis University .

April Rosenblum, author The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere, contributor to Righteous Indignation
April Rosenblum is an activist educator whose teaching tools for the Left on Anti-Semitism brought her recognition in the Jewish Forward’s “Forward 50” as one of 2007’s most influential American Jews, for her pamphlet, “The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere: Making Resistance to Anti-Semitism Part of All of Our Movements.” Her writing has appeared in Bridges, New Voices, Righteous Indignation: A Jewish Call for Justice and the forthcoming International Encyclopedia of Protest and Revolution. April has been active for over a decade in grassroots activism on issues of race, criminal justice and the case of death row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal and other U.S. political prisoners. She teaches Yiddish to young adults and is a vibrant proponent of reclaiming secular Jewish identity and culture.

Rabbi Michael Rothbaum, Hillels of Westchester
Rabbi Michael Rothbaum is Campus Rabbi and Program Director for Hillels of Westchester, serving Sarah Lawrence College and Purchase College. He has pursued social justice initiatives at Congregation Beth Simchat Torah as a Cooperberg-Rittmaster Rabbinical Intern, and as Student Rabbi at Reconstructionist Temple Beth Israel in Maywood, NJ. Rothbaum has worked with the New York Forum of Concerned Religious Leaders, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, Rabbinical Students for a Just Peace, and the Committee for the Human Rights of Immigrants and is an alumnus of Seminary Summer, a joint project of the AFL-CIO and Interfaith Worker Justice, bringing labor organizers together with clergy. His sermon opposing the Iraq War was included in the anthology Peace, Justice, and Jews: Reclaiming Our Tradition.

Basya Schecter, Pharoah’s Daughter
Basya Schechter blends Hasidic chants and Mizrachi and Sephardi folk-rock in leading her eclectic band, Pharaoh’s Daughter. Her sound has been cultivated by her Hasidic background and a series of trips to the Middle East, Africa, Israel , Egypt , Central Africa, Turkey , Kurdistan and Greece . She has recorded three albums with Pharaoh’s Daughter and one instrumental exploration with Persian santur player, Alan Kushan. Pharaoh’s Daughter tours in America , Eastern and Western Europe , Greece and the UK . Basya plays as part of the music ensemble that accompanies Friday night services at B’nai Jeshurun and has received grants from NYSCA (New York State Council of the Arts) American Composers Forum, and the American Music Center.

Martin Schwartz, Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring
Martin Schwartz is the Director of The Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring’s Center for Social and Economic Justice, working with leaders and activists on the national social action program for the WC/AR - public policy positions, programs and actions on issues including civil, immigration and workers’ rights, Mid-East peace, and health care reform. He also directs the New Jersey Region of WC/AR, responsible for programming throughout the state. Martin previously directed the New York Region opf WC/AR and served as the Assistant Director for Latin American Affairs at the Anti-Defamation League; Executive Director of B’nai Brith District 23, based in Caracas, Venezuela and Director of Educational Programs for American Jewish World Service. He studied International Relations at the London School of Economics and was a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador.

Tammy Shapiro, Union of Progressive Zionists
Tammy Shapiro is Executive Director of the Union of Progressive Zionists, regularly facilitating workshops and trainings for students all across the country. As a student in International Studies at University of Wisconsin - Madison, she founded and ran the Union of progressive Zionists’ affiliated group Kavanah.
Tammy has spent significant time in the Middle East living in Israel, studying conflict resolution in Cyprus and travelling to Palestine, Egypt and Turkey

Rabbi David Shneyer, Am Kolel Sanctuary Retreat and Renewal Center
David Shneyer is director of the Am Kolel Center in Montgomery County Maryland and the spiritual leader of Kehila Chadasha. Past president of Ohalah, the Association of Renewal Rabbis and Cantors, David is now Ohalah’s Social Justice/Tikkun Olam chairperson. Long active in Rabbis for Human Rights, David is also a founder of the D.C. based Jewish United for Justice. A longtime anti-war activist David is also a singer/composer and leads the band Farbrengen Fiddlers. A member of the Washington Board of Rabbis, he serves on the board of the United Nations Association of the D.C. Capitol Region.

Dara Silverman, Jews for Racial & Economic Justice
Dara Silverman is a political organizer, trainer and writer. She is the out-going Executive Director of JFREJ- Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, a grassroots membership based organization that organizes Jews to fight for racial, economic and gender justice in New York. Over the past fifteen years Dara has worked on a wide range of social, economic and racial justice struggles. She is co-creator of the “Love and Justice in Times of War Haggadah.” and on the board of Resource Generation. Dara can be reached at dara@jfrej.org.

MARC SUSSMAN, The Climate Project/Air America
Marc Sussman hosts a syndicated progressive financial radio talk show, heard on the Air America network and XM Satellite Radio.
Sussman is a presenter for The Climate Project, Al Gore’s organization growing out of the landmark movie “An Inconvenient Truth,” travelling extgensively to educate audiences on climate change and its impact. Sussman has served as a member of the Workmen’s Circle’s National Executive Board and Chairman of its New York Region. He has served as Certified Financial Planner for the organization since 1993, in his capacity as a member of Progressive Asset Management, a socially responsible investment firm. www.The Climate Project.com; www.Air America Radio.com; www.The Sussman Group.com

William K. Tabb, Queens College
William K. Tabb has been Professor of Economics, Political Science and Sociology at the Graduate Center fo the City University of New York and Professor of Economics at Queens College. His books include Economic Governance in the Age of Globalization (Columbia University Press), The Amoral Elephant: Globalization and the Struggle for Social Justice in the Twenty-First Century (Monthly Review), and Reconstructing Political Economy: The Great Divide in Economic Thought (Routledge) among others. His recent writing on the financial crisis can be found on ZNet and the MRZine.

Ann Toback, Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring
Ann Toback is the Executive Director of the Workman’s Circle/Arbeter,co-sponsor of today’s event. Previously, Toback was Assistant Executive Director of the Writers Guild of America, East, responsible for developing and implementing labor campaigns; serving as chief negotiator for Guild collective bargaining agreements with the major studios and media conglomerates, including ABC/Disney, CBS, and NBC; andoverseeing the Guild’s political and lobbying strategies. During the recent 100-day writers strike that ended in February, Toback mobilized membership, coordinated New York picketing strategies, and served as Guild representative before legislators andthe media. Prior to joining the Writers Guild of America, East, Toback was a lawyerwith the Boston law firm of Rosenberg & Schapiro.

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, The Shalom Center
Rabbi Arthur O. Waskow is a creator and leader of the Jewish renewal movement, founding and directing The Shalom Center, working on issues from nuclear arms, Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, the environment, to shared Abrahamic action for peace and justice. His books include Freedom Seder and his books Seasons of Our Joy, Godwrestling, and, with his wife Rabbi Phyllis O. Berman, A Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven. Through the Shalom Center’s Green Menorah Covenant he has pioneered Eco-Judaism and initiated multireligious observances of sacred seasons and peace actions through The Tent of Abraham initiatives. He worked 23 years in Washington DC as a legislative assistant on Capitol Hill, one of the original Fellows of the Institute for Policy Studies and of the Public Resource Center, delegate to the Democratic National Convention of 1968, and on the steering committee of the New Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam.

Rabbi Simkha Weintraub, Rabbis for Human Rights-North America
Simkha Y. Weintraub, LCSW is Rabbinic Director of the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services, serving New Yorkers of all backgrounds through the New York Jewish Healing Center and the National Center for Jewish Healing, serving the US, Canada and Latin America. He is a founding board member of Rabbis for Human Rights-N.A., and has been involved in Jewish-Arab and Jewish-Muslim dialogue for over 25 years. Rabbi Weintraub designs and leads workshops on confronting illness, including training rabbis and health care professionals, creates Jewish healing rituals, and writes and lectures widely on Jewish spiritual healing. He has a private practice in Couples and Family Therapy, is editor of the NCJH’s Healing of Soul, Healing of Body and Guide Me Along the Way: A Jewish Spiritual Companion for Surgery, and a major contributor to the Jewish Spiritual Companion for Medical Treatments.