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Presenters At BJLA
Dr. Erica Brown
Dr. Erica Brown is a writer and educator who works as the scholar-in-residence for the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington and consults for the Jewish Agency and other Jewish non-profits.
Erica is the author of the books Inspired Jewish Leadership, a National Jewish Book Award finalist, and Spiritual Boredom. She also co-authored The Case for Jewish Peoplehood (all through Jewish Lights). Her forthcoming book is Confronting Scandal.
Previously a Jerusalem Fellow, Erica is a faculty member of the Wexner Foundation, an Avi Chai Fellow, winner of the Ted Farber Professional Excellence Award, and the recipient of the 2009 Covenant Award for her work in education. Erica has degrees from Yeshiva University, University of London, Harvard University, and Baltimore Hebrew University. She has served as an adjunct professor at American University and George Washington University and lectures widely on subjects of Jewish interest and leadership.
She writes a weekly internet essay called “Weekly Jewish Wisdom” that appears on the Newsweek/Washington Post’s “On Faith” website.
She resides with her husband and four children in Silver Spring, MD and can be reached at erica@leadingwithmeaning.com.
Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld
Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld graduated from Stanford University with degrees in Classics and Anthropology. Having exploring numerous traditions, he began his return toward a Jewish path after living in rural Mississippi, “surrounded by folks who knew my people's book better than I did!” He eventually journeyed to Israel, where he studied for seven years and was ordained. After three years in Northern California, he recently relocated to the East Coast with his wife and children and founded Jewish Spiritual Literacy, Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to revitalizing Jewish education. Rabbi Seinfeld is author of the popular Penguin paperback, The Art of Amazement: Judaism’s Forgotten Spirituality and engages audiences from all Jewish backgrounds with his humor and depth of insight into spiritual and philosophical topics.
Dr. Mitchell Bard
Dr. Mitchell Bard is the Executive Director of the nonprofit American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE) and a foreign policy analyst who lectures frequently on U.S.-Middle East policy. Dr. Bard is also the director of the Jewish Virtual Library, the world’s most comprehensive online encyclopedia of Jewish history and culture.
For three years he was the editor of the Near East Report, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's (AIPAC) weekly newsletter on U.S. Middle East policy.
Prior to working at AIPAC, Dr. Bard served as a senior analyst in the polling division of the 1988 Bush campaign.
Dr. Bard is a member of a number of speakers bureaus, including the UJC, Hillel, Israel Bonds and the Jewish National Fund. He is also represented by the Harry Walker Agency.
Dr. Bard has appeared on Fox News, MSNBC, NBC, CBC, the Jenny Jones Show, al-Jazeera and other local and national television and radio outlets. His work has been published in academic journals, magazines and major newspapers. He is the author of 18 books:
* The Arab Lobby: The Invisible Alliance That Undermines America's Interests in the Middle East
* 48 Hours of Kristallnacht: Night of Destruction/ Dawn of the Holocaust
* Will Israel Survive?
* 1001 Facts Everyone Should Know About Israel [with Moshe Schwartz]
* The Water's Edge And Beyond: Defining the Limits to Domestic Influence on U.S. Middle East Policy
* Myths and Facts: A Guide to the Arab-Israeli Conflict
* Forgotten Victims: The Abandonment of Americans in Hitler's Camps
* The Complete Idiot's Guide to World War II
* The Complete Idiot's Guide to Middle East Conflict
* The Complete History of the Holocaust
* The Holocaust (Turning Points in World History)
* The Nuremberg Trials (At Issue in History)
* The Nuremberg Trials (Eyewitness to History)
* From Tragedy to Triumph: The Politics behind the Rescue of Ethiopian Jewry
* The Complete Idiot's Guide to Understanding the Brain
* Partners for Change: How U.S.-Israel Cooperation Can Benefit America
* U.S.-Israel Relations: Looking to the Year 2000
* Building Bridges: Lessons For America From Novel Israeli Approaches To Promote Coexistence
* Myths And Facts: A Concise Record of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (coauthor)
* On One Foot: A Middle East Guide for the Perplexed or How to Respond on Your Way to Class When Your Best Friend Joins an Anti-Israel Protest
* The Founding of the State of Israel
Bard holds a Ph.D. in political science from UCLA and a master’s degree in public policy from Berkeley. He received his B.A. in economics from the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Nancy Hall
Nancy Hall, president of 501(c) Solutions, has long been a part of the nonprofit community in Maryland. In the late eighties she worked with a number of then-new groups to set up their financial and administrative systems. She is happy to report that many of these startups are still going strong. In addition, Nancy was a key staff member at the Maryland Association of Nonprofit Organizations for seventeen years, providing training and technical assistance to hundreds of nonprofits.
Nancy takes the best practices of high performing corporations and adapts them for use in the nonprofit sector. She is able to make complex business concepts easily understood by artists, social workers, and advocates that often head up nonprofit organizations. Nancy has trained thousands of nonprofit executives and board members on basic financial literacy not only in Maryland but across the country. A natural teacher and story teller, she is currently adjunct faculty at The Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland School of Social Work, and the University of Maryland Baltimore County where she teaches courses on nonprofit management and government and nonprofit finance.
Nancy is an expert in the legal structure of nonprofits and has assisted in the start-up of hundreds of organizations, merged many partners, and helped to close down organizations. She was one of the first women to receive an MBA from the Harvard Business School, which has prepared her for her current favorite pastime-running the lives of her three grown children.
Rabbi Richard Address
Rabbi Richard F. Address serves as the specialist and congregation consultant for the North American Reform movement in the program areas of Caring Community and Family Concerns. His work has been based on the belief that a congregation, to be a true “caring community”, must be founded on a theology of sacred relationships.
A major part of Address’s work has been in the development and implementation of the project on Sacred Aging. This project has been responsible for creating awareness and resources for congregations on the implication of the emerging longevity revolution with growing emphasis on the aging of the baby boom generation. This aging revolution has begun to impact all aspects of Jewish communal and congregational life.
Rabbi Address was ordained at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in Cincinnati (1972) and served congregations in California before joining the staff of the Union for Reform Judaism (formerly the Union of American Hebrew Congregations) in 1978. He directed the Union’s Pennsylvania Council from 1978 through 2000. In 1997 he founded the Department of Jewish Family Concerns and went full time in New York in January of 2001.
Rabbi Address received a Certificate in Pastoral Counseling from the Post Graduate Center for Mental Health in 1998 and his Doctor of Ministry from HUC-JIR in 1999. He also received his honorary Doctorate from HUC-JIR in 1997.
Rabbi Niles Goldstein
Niles Elliot Goldstein is Rabbi Emeritus of The New Shul, where he served as its spiritual leader from its founding in 1999 until 2009. Prior to The New Shul, Niles was a senior fellow at CLAL: The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a program officer at The Steinhardt Foundation, and the assistant rabbi at Temple Israel in New Rochelle. He is a member of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and the New York Board of Rabbis.
Niles is the author or editor of nine books, including the award-winning Gonzo Judaism: A Bold Path for Renewing an Ancient Faith, and his writing has appeared in many publications, including Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, The Forward, and Moment. He has been featured and interviewed in Time, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, The Jerusalem Report, The New York Observer, New York Magazine, The Jewish Week, and Beliefnet, as well as on domestic and international television and radio.
Niles served as the voice behind "Ask the Rabbi" on the Microsoft Network. He is the national Jewish chaplain for the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association. Niles holds an honors B.A. in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania and received an M.A. and his Ordination from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Niles teaches across the country and abroad on issues in mysticism and spirituality, values and leadership, the environment, and on new models for religious life in the 21st century.
