Trisha Arlin
Trisha Arlin, Builder, Liturgical Arts Working Group. She/her.
Trisha Arlin is a liturgist, writer, performer and student of prayer in Brooklyn, NY and was a part-time rabbinic student at the Academy of Jewish Religion (AJR), 2012-18. Trisha was the Liturgist-In-Residence during the National Havurah Committee’s 2014 Summer Institute, has served as Scholar or Artist In Residence at many synagogues where she has read, led services and taught her class, Writing Prayer. This year Trisha is teaching prayer writing, doing readings and leading discussions of her book on zoom with Ritualwell, Haggadot.com and for synagogues around the country. She is a builder of Bayit’s Liturgical Arts project. Trisha received a BA in Theater from Antioch College in 1975 and MFA in Film (Screenwriting) in 1997 from Columbia University. In 2009/2010, Trisha was an Arts Fellow at the Drisha Institute. In 2011, she graduated from the sixth cohort of the Davennen Leadership Training Institute (DLTI). A longtime member of Kolot Chayeinu/Voices of our Lives, a progressive unaffiliated congregation in Brooklyn NY, Trisha’s liturgy has been used at services and ritual occasions and in newsletter there and at venues of many denominations nationwide. Her work has been published in her book, Place Yourself: Words of Poetry and Intention (a collection of liturgy and kavannot. Foreword by Rabbi Jill Hammer, Artwork by Mike Cockrill. 2019 Dimus Parrhesia Press); the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion; Seder Tefillot, Forms of Prayer: Prayers for the High Holydays, (Movement for Reform Judaism); B’chol Levavecha (CCAR Press); Beside Still Waters: A Journey of Comfort and Renewal, Bayit and Ben Yehuda Press; A Poet’s Siddur (Ain’t Got No Press); Studies in Judaism and Pluralism (Ben Yehuda Press) and can be found online at TrishaArlin.com, at Ritualwell.org, opensiddur.org.
Rabbi Rachel Barenblat
Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, M.F.A., Founding Builder; Board member; Lead Architect, Bayit Publishing and Liturgical Arts Working Group. She/her.
Rachel was named in 2016 by the Forward as one of America’s Most Inspiring Rabbis. A fellow of Rabbis Without Borders, she holds dual ordination as rabbi and mashpi’ah (spiritual director). Since 2011 Rachel has served as spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires (North Adams, MA). She also served as interim Jewish chaplain to Williams College and, with David Markus, as past co-chair of ALEPH. She holds an MFA in Writing and Literature from the Bennington Writing Seminars, and is author of six volumes of poetry, among them 70 faces: Torah poems (Phoenicia Publishing, 2011), Open My Lips (Ben Yehuda Press, 2016), Texts to the Holy (Ben Yehuda 2018), and Crossing the Sea (Phoenicia, 2020). Since 2003 she has blogged as The Velveteen Rabbi, and in 2008 TIME named her blog one of the top 25 sites on the internet. Her work has appeared in Reform Judaism, The Wisdom Daily, The Forward, and anthologies ranging from The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry (Bloomsbury) to The Women’s Seder Sourcebook (Jewish Lights). Her downloadable Velveteen Rabbi’s Haggadah for Pesach has been used around the world. She is visiting faculty at the Academy for Spiritual Formation (teaching both at two-year and at five-day retreats) and has also taught (among other places) at Beyond Walls, a writing program for clergy of many faiths at the Kenyon Institute.
Dr. Shari Berkowitz
Dr. Shari Salzhauer Berkowitz, Ph.D., Builder, Bayit Publishing. She/her.
Shari Salzhauer Berkowitz, creator with Steve Silbert of the contemplative spiritual-creative volume Color the Omer and a regular contributor to Builders Blog, is a professor of Communication Disorders and a speech-language pathologist. She serves as a lay service leader and Vice President of Temple Beth El of City Island, NY, also known as “your shul by the sea.”
Mike Cockrill
Mike Cockrill, Liturgical Arts Working Group. He/him.
Mike Cockrill has been making conceptually engaged, socially challenging work since he first began showing in Brooklyn and the East Village in the early 1980s. Cockrill grew up in the suburbs of Washington, DC in the late 50s and early 60s, with a father who began his career at the Pentagon and a mother who later worked for the CIA. He has a particular affinity for the pop-culture images of postwar America and their darker subtexts. Classically trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Cockrill employs a deep understanding of visual idioms that he deftly twists, literally and conceptually. Cockrill’s art is ever evolving, always playing the unnerving against the sublime. He lives and works in Brooklyn, and has maintained a studio in the Old American Can Factory since 1979. He and his wife are members of Kolot Chayeinu in Park Slope. Find him online here.
Sherrill Cropper
Sherrill Cropper, Liturgical Arts Working Group. She/her.
Sherrill was raised in a suburban New York secular Jewish family. They celebrated main holidays and had a clear identity of their heritage but there was little to no religious education for her and her two sisters beyond the Haggadah. Following a career in finance and guided by 40+ years of a Tibetan Buddhist practice, her last 20 years have been enriched with community activism/service, entrepreneurship and being a self-identifying geek and lifelong learner. She is happily married to Lloyd for 33 years and they have three accomplished adult children…along with dogs, chickens, cats, blue-tongued skinks and often other strays that seem to fall into their menagerie. She recently began to feel an undeniable spiritual push towards Judaism and a desire to reintegrate it into her life. Shortly afterward, many opportunities seemingly ‘fell into her lap’ to explore her birthright and she hasn’t looked back. Since then, she’s recently become a member of two synagogues, taken classes in Hebrew and is in three ongoing Torah studies. Last June, she went to Israel for the first time describing it as an extra-ordinary experience, where something seems to have unexpectedly ‘broken open’ to a direct connection with our shared heritage and ancestry that is now alive and vibrant within her.
Joanne Fink
Joanne Fink, Builder, Liturgical Arts Working Group. She/her.
Zenspirations® founder Joanne Fink is an artist, writer and spiritual seeker who loves helping people discover their innate creative gifts. An award-winning designer, inspirational workshop facilitator and artist-in-residence, Joanne expresses what’s in her heart through art and prayers, prose and poetry. With a background in product development and art licensing, today she develops products to help people connect and support one another, including collections of Zenspirations Emoji Stickers (available in the App Store- search Zenspirations). Joanne started her career designing greeting cards and Ketubot (Jewish Wedding Contracts) and in 1991 helped found the American Guild of Judaic Art. She is a best-selling author with more than one million books in print; two of her favorites are My Spiritual Journey, a guided journal designed to help you set and implement intentions to fulfill your personal purpose, and When You Lose Someone You Love, an illustrated memoir written the year after her husband died. Currently Joanne is working on her next book, a collection of illustrations and prayers based on the weekly parashot (Torah portion). For more information on Joanne and her work visit her websites: www.JoanneFinkJudaica.com, www.WhenYouLoseSomeone.com, and www.zenspirations.com.
Rabbi Jonathan Freirich
Rabbi Jonathan Freirich, Board member. He/him.
Jonathan, a fellow of Rabbis Without Borders, participated in cutting edge engagement techniques starting as a Rabbinic Intern in the 1990’s at Hillel on campus in the Philadelphia area. Since then, he has brought small group learning experiments, Jewish worship innovations, and organizational expertise, to Hillel organizations in Tucson, Arizona, and Cleveland, Ohio; and worked with Jews of all ages and stages as a congregational rabbi in a small synagogue in South Lake Tahoe, California, and in large synagogues in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Buffalo, New York. Open Door Judaism is Jonathan’s venture aiming to bring Jewish meaning to those currently outside of institutional Jewish life. Jonathan received rabbinic ordination from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and is a member of both the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association and the Central Conference of American Rabbis.
Rabbi Allie Fischman
Rabbi Allie Fischman; Builder, Liturgical Arts Working Group; she/her.
Allie has served the Reform Jewish overnight camp, URJ Camp Newman, in the San Francisco Bay Area as Associate Director and now Camp Director since 2014 after receiving a masters degree in Jewish education and rabbinic ordination from the Reform seminary, HUC-JIR. As an artist, musician, writer, and creative goofball, overnight camp offers the perfect stage for Allie to combine her loves of Jewish education, spirituality, and creativity to help instill a love of Judaism and Jewish life for campers and young adult staff alike. She plays with different media and art forms like graphic recording, sketchnoting, painting, inking, and drawing on an iPad Pro, and loves to bring the works of folks like Brenè Brown into her Jewish teaching. Allie lives with her husband, Lane, and young son, Jude, in the Bay Area where they enjoy hiking, cooking fantastic food, and playing with their eccentric pup, Maggie.
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman, Builder, Bayit Publishing. He/him.
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman (he/him) has served as spiritual leader for Brith Sholom Jewish Center of Erie, PA since 2018, and lives and teaches in Pittsburgh, PA. He is the author of Life Lessons from Recently Dead Rabbis: Hassidut for the People, forthcoming from Bayit in 2022. He has been a Jewish educator for over 20 years, for folks ages 10 to 93. He likes texts from the Hassidic tradition in particular because they probe our own personal stories and struggles by using Torah as a vehicle for self-examination. He is Congregation Beth Shalom’s instructor for Introduction to Judaism, and sponsors and mentors many people who are on a path toward becoming Jewish. Rabbi Mark is a big soccer fan, a competent skier and harmonica player, and an accredited archery instructor. He has one misdemeanor conviction for political protest, and a turtle named Lefty. Learn more at his website.
Sally Wiener Grotta
Sally Wiener Grotta, Builder, Bayit Publishing. She/her.
Sally Wiener Grotta is an award-winning writer, photographer and speaker who has traveled on assignment throughout the world to all the continents (including three trips to Antarctica), plus many remote islands (such as Papua New Guinea and the Falklands), covering a wide diversity of cultures and traditions. Her far-ranging experiences flavor her visual and verbal stories and presentations with a sense of wonder and joy, plus a healthy dose of common sense. Her fine art photography project American Hands, for which she created narrative portraits of traditional tradespeople, has received more than three dozen grants, and the exhibits have been seen by over a quarter million people. Her hundreds of stories, columns and essays have appeared in scores of magazines, newspapers and journals. Her books include the novels The Winter Boy (a Locus Magazine’s 2015 Recommended Read) and Jo Joe (a Jewish Book Council Network book). Her short story “One Widow’s Healing” won a 2019 Health Odyssey award. A member of SFWA and The Authors Guild, Sally is co-curator of the Galactic Philadelphia author reading series and co-chair of The Authors Guild Philadelphia Chapter.
Rabbi Pamela Gottfried
Rabbi Pamela Gottfried, Board member; Builder, Bayit Publishing. She/her.
Since receiving rabbinic ordination and earning an M.A. in Jewish Education from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1993, Pamela Gottfried has taught students of all ages in churches, colleges, community centers, mosques, retreat centers, schools, summer camps, and synagogues. She currently serves as the Interim Rabbi at Temple Kol Emeth in Marietta, GA while the congregation conducts a search for their next rabbi. Pamela is an alumna of Clal’s Rabbis Without Borders and LEAP fellowships, and a member of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association. She is the author of Found in Translation: Common Words of Uncommon Wisdom, and is currently working on a collection of creative nonfiction that includes stories and poems about her 25+ years as a parent and rabbi. In addition to attending Spiritual Poetry Writing classes, she spends her free time reading novels, solving crosswords, playing Scrabble with her spouse, and taking walks with her faithful canine companion, Henry.
Rabbi Cyn Hoffman
Rabbi Cyn Hoffman, Board member; Builder, Bayit Publishing. They/them.
Cyn, a writer, intellectual, and teacher, started Rabbinical School at The Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, and holds dual ordination from ALEPH as rabbi and mashpi’ah (spiritual director). Cyn attended graduate school in English at UC Berkeley, where they served as Production Director for the early internet zine bad subjects. Their work has appeared in bad subjects, Tikkun Magazine, and Zeek, among others, and in anthologies ranging from The Bad Subjects Anthology (NYU) and Technologies of Writing (Prentiss Hall) to Beside Still Waters, a recent publication of Bayit and Ben Yehuda Press. Disability has taken them out of the public arena, but they continue to write and teach as often as possible. Among their current projects, Cyn is working with their rebbe Burt Jacobson on his book on The Mystery of the Ba’al Shem Tov. In addition, they are working on two books of their own: one on the philosophy and poetry of the commentary and teachings attributed to the Besht, and another on Mysticism in the Mediterranean Basin, 1200-1500.
Rabbanit Bracha Jaffe
Rabbanit Bracha Jaffe, Builder, Liturgical Arts Working Group. She/her.
Rabbanit Bracha Jaffe serves as the Associate Rabba at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in Bronx, NY. She is a dynamic and thoughtful educator who loves teaching in Hebrew or English and inspiring others to learn. She has taught many to leyn and is the voice of the JOFA Megillat Esther and Megillat Rut Apps. Some of her favorite pastimes are kickboxing and reading books to her grandchildren over Zoom. Rabbanit Bracha lives in Riverdale, NY with her husband Martin.
Rabbi Dara Lithwick
Rabbi Dara Lithwick, Board member; Builder, Liturgical Arts Working Group. She/her.
Rabbi Dara is passionate about building bridges between people and communities and promoting inclusion as a fundamental Jewish practice. She is an advocate for LGBTQ2+ inclusion within diverse Jewish spaces, as well as for Jewish inclusion in LGBTQ2+ spaces. When not at work as a constitutional and parliamentary affairs lawyer, Rabbi Dara is active as an outreach rabbi at Temple Israel Ottawa, where she helps lead services and lifecycle events, teach adult and youth programs, and engage in outreach and social action initiatives, and led High Holiday services at Congregation Shir Libeynu in Toronto, the longest standing LGBTQ-inclusive shul in the city. Rabbi Dara is also chairing a Canadian Council for Reform Judaism group to develop a Tikkun Olam strategy for Canada and is the Canadian representative to the Union for Reform Judaism’s Commission on Social Action. She also serves on the JSpace Canada Advisory Board, and on the LGBTQ2+ Advisory Council at CIJA, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.. Rabbi Dara and her partner love chasing their two children around Ottawa.
Rabbi David Evan Markus
Rabbi David Evan Markus , J.D., M.P.P., Founding Builder; Board Co-Chair; Board member; Builder, Liturgical Arts Working Group. He/him.
David is a unique pathfinder and change agent across sectors, honored among Jewish life’s “36 to Watch” (Jewish Week 2022) and New York’s Power 100 (City and State 2023) for his double leadership in secular and spiritual life. David is rabbi of Congregation Shir Ami (Greenwich, CT) and faculty at the Academy for Jewish Religion. A Rabbis Without Borders fellow and Oreach Fellow for Jewish spiritual arts, David has served as ALEPH Board co-chair with Rachel Barenblat, scholar in residence for My Jewish Learning and communities across North America, and ALEPH spirituality faculty. David is lead author and editor of A Year of Building Torah, an anthology harvesting Jewish wisdom for community and leadership development. “By day,” David presides in the New York Judiciary in a parallel public-service career spanning presidential campaigns, all branches and levels of government, and graduate faculty in government and public administration at Fordham and Pace Universities. David holds double ordination as rabbi and mashpia (spiritual director) from ALEPH; a graduate certificate in spiritual entrepreneurship from Columbia Business School; a Juris Doctor magna cum laude from Harvard Law School; and a Master in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School, which named him a global Innovator in Public Service.
Rabbi Mike Moskowitz
Rabbi Mike Moskowitz, Founding Builder; Board member. He/him.
Mike studied at the Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem where he received smicha. He then continued his studies at BMG in Lakewood where he received an advanced degree in Talmud. For 15 years, he was engaged in Jewish outreach and education as the Dean of Students of the Yeshivah of Virginia. Most recently he has served as a rabbi at Columbia University and of the Old Broadway Synagogue in Harlem. Mike is a vocal advocate for inclusivity, LGBT rights, and social justice. He writes frequently at the intersection of transgender issues and Jewish thought. Formerly senior educator at Orthodox social justice organization Uri L’Tzedek, and currently Scholar-in-Residence on Queer and Trans Issues at CBST, Mike is working on a doctorate in Talmud at The Jewish Theological Seminary – JTS.
Rabbi Sonja Keren Pilz
Rabbi Sonja Keren Pilz, Ph.D, Builder, Liturgical Arts Working Group. She/her.
Rabbi Sonja Keren Pilz earned her doctorate from the department of Rabbinic Literature at Potsdam University in Germany and holds Rabbinic Ordination from Abraham Geiger College in Germany. Prior to becoming the spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Shalom, she worked for the Central Conference of American Rabbis as Editor of CCAR Press. She also taught Worship, Liturgy, and Ritual at HUC-JIR in New York and the School of Jewish Theology at Potsdam University, and served as a rabbinic intern, adjunct rabbi, and cantorial soloist for congregations in Germany, Switzerland, Israel, and the US. Not surprisingly, she loves to write poetry, midrashim, and prayers. Her work has been published in ERGON, Liturgy, Worship, the CCAR Journal, Ritual Well, and a number of anthologies. She lives with her husband and son in Bozeman, MT.
Emily Rogal
Emily Rogal, Builder, Liturgical Arts Working Group. She/her.
Emily Rogal is a former midwestern emo kid turned aspiring healer and educator. She graduated from The New School in 2017 with a degree in Religious Studies, where she focused on the mikveh as a site of contemporary feminist ritual intervention and care, before pursuing a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School. She has experience working in the music industry, hospital chaplaincy, domestic violence and sexual assault counseling, and is a trained birth and postpartum doula, mikveh guide, and a Jewish educator invested in cultivating spaces which center reflection, resilience, joy, justice, and just the right amount of angst. She spends the majority of her free time drinking oat milk lattes, hunting down weird midrashim (which is basically rabbi fanfiction in her book), reading and writing fantasy, and finding her perpetually lost water bottle.
Justin Sakofs
Justin Sakofs, Board member; Builder, Bayit Publishing and Bayit Games. He/him.
Justin is an entrepreneurial, Agile Jewish creative. A trained educator, he worked in nearly every avenue of Jewish communal life: schools, camps, synagogues, Federation and as the creator of MagneticShul. He developed MagneticShul to meet the needs of youth attending synagogues so they could engage through play while being unable to access the environment. By day, Justin works in Agile Transformation as a Scrum Master, where he helps teams improve communication to work more effectively to get the job done. Justin maintains a strong commitment to Jewish learning by teaching Melton classes and being involved with Limmud North America.
Justin first got involved with Bayit through developing the layouts for Bayit publications. This experience has furthered his creative pursuits to (re)think how we live lives fueled by Jewish learning. Much of Justin’s thinking involve how our environments and experiences are meeting the needs of attendees and what the effects will be of the future. His passion ignites when others own their future and their approach to living based on the diversity of Jewish learnings. If you ever are looking for a thought partner as a hevruta and looking to simply explore ideas and ensure that there is a process to reach a goal, give Justin a call to talk it through.
After seeing the inside of six DMVs, Justin resides in Jacksonville, Florida with his wife-Rachel and their three ever growing children. In many ways, they are his inspiration to be agile and forward thinking.
Steve Silbert
Steve Silbert, Board member; Board Co-Chair; Lead Builder, Visual Torah and Bayit Games; Builder, Liturgical Arts Working Group. He/him.
Steve is an Enterprise Agile Coach, working with Fortune 500 companies and other organizations to enhance value, relational intelligence and business outcomes. He has been sketchnoting since 2015, which led him to Jewish innovation spaces and Visual Torah. Since joining Bayit, Steve illustrated or contributed illustrations to several books, interviewed on numerous podcasts, guest lectured in seminaries on bringing visuality into Jewish spiritual life, and served as artist-in-residence in synagogues around North America. Steve founded Bayit Games to harness Agile-infused design thinking for remixing Jewish spiritual practices and texts with a playful flair.
Rabbi Jennifer Singer
Rabbi Jennifer Singer, M.Ed., Founding Builder; Builder, Liturgical Arts Working Group She/her.
Jennifer is the spiritual leader of Congregation Kol HaNeshama in Sarasota, Florida, where she has served since 2008, first as education director and then as spiritual leader beginning in 2013. She was ordained as a rabbi and spiritual director by ALEPH in January, 2017. She holds a Master’s Degree in Jewish Education from The Jewish Theological Seminary. She has taught extensively, including in a groundbreaking pilot program for emerging community leaders created by The Jewish Federations of North America, and was a contributor to the second edition of the curriculum. She spent 20 years as an endowment professional and major gifts fundraiser in the Jewish community, most recently working for the American Technion Society. She previously worked in marketing, and as a journalist and freelance writer, and is the co-author of Opportunity Knocks: Using PR. She blogs at SRQ Jew.
Devon Spier
Devon Spier; Builder, Liturgical Arts Working Group
Devon Spier is an author and visual poet theologian (proemologian), who weaves and teaches others to weave poems, prose and theology through digital images. Believing that Jewish life can be an elevated expression of democracy, she transmits a Judaism of heart in which people and their lives are embraced exactly as they are. Devon is the most published author on Ritualwell.org and has resourced nearly every mainstream movement, network and denomination of Judaism to explore the intersections of health, recovery, trauma and well-being. Her work has been consulted and published by the London School for Jewish Studies, the Reconstructing Judaism movement, The Union for Reform Judaism, Liberal Judaism (UK), Jewish Women’s Archive, Hevria and Jewcer: The Leading Crowdfunding Platform for Jewish Causes, the City Museum of New York, Ben Yehuda Press, Repair The World, AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps and most recently, the National Council of Jewish Women, which used her work to resource members on solidarity with indigenous sovereignty and rituals for reproductive freedom. The author of two bestselling books, Heart Map and the Song of Our Ancestors and Whatever it is, gently: Meditations for the Quiet Noise of the Pandemic, Devon‘s poetry conveys the possibility of a deeper listening to anyone who stands at the Jewish margins, whom she regards as the actual centre of Jewish life and spiritual practice. She is proudest of the fact that her work is being used by an emerging generation of Jewish leaders and communities who both question and belong, asking of each other and G-d: “What is it that we aren’t talking about?”
Mary Walter
Mary Walter, she/her; Builder, Bayit Games
Mary is an artist and digital illustrator from Kansas City, formally trained as an artist at Texas A&M. Mary works in nonprofit finance, and became involved with Bayit after meeting Steve Silbert and finding that they share common interests in Judaica, family education and art. As a team, they build spiritual engagement tools and games that help families experience Jewish tradition in new ways. As a mom of two, Mary spends most of her “kid” time in the kitchen, playing games or reading stories. She and her spouse collect board games and are foodies, frequently hosting game nights and cooking up new recipes (literally re-mixing tradition).
Rabbi David Zaslow
Rabbi David Zaslow; Builder, Liturgical Arts Working Group, he/him
Rabbi David Zaslow received his master’s degree in creative writing in 1973, and is the author of several books of poetry for both children and adults. In a former lifetime he ran a jazz club that produced concerts with the likes of Taj Mahal, Dave Brubeck, Count Basie, and Doc Watson. Since receiving his rabbinical ordination from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi he has been the spiritual leader of the Havurah Synagogue starting in 1996. His focus has always been on interfaith work and cultivating a culture of peace between the different spiritual paths that southern Oregon is so blessed to host. He is the author of two interfaith books, Reimagining Exodus and Jesus: First-Century Rabbi, as well as a prayerbook for spiritual renewal called Ivdu et Hashem B’simcha – Serve the Holy One with Joy.