A Celebration of our Graduates 2021/5781

Cantorial Ordination

Jana Rachael Schachter
Marc Louis Stober
Jessica Woolf Silverberg

>> Read about the ordainees and their cantorial scholarship campaign

Rabbinic Ordination

Samuel Robert Blumberg
Tyler Harris Dratch
Max Leonard Edwards
Dena Rachel Glasgow
Justin Phillip Held
Rachel Tali Kaplan
Amalia Leah Mark
Kenneth P. Richmond
Shoshana Leia Rosenbaum
Jamie Ellen Silverstein Stolper

>> Read about the ordainees and their Rabbinical School scholarship campaign

Master of Arts in Jewish Studies

Ilene Laurie Aube
Laura Ann Berry
Samuel Robert Blumberg
Emily Dara Brocks
Sherri Lynne Berman Carignan
Jennifer Aileen Daks
Dena Rachel Glasgow
Rachel Tali Kaplan
Amalia Leah Mark
Kenneth P. Richmond
Shoshana Leia Rosenbaum
Jessie Leah Koppell Rubenstein
Jana Rachael Schachter
Jeanne Libby Snodgrass
Jamie Ellen Silverstein Stolper
Lynn R. Wilson
Jessica Woolf Silverberg

Master of Jewish Education

Emily Dara Brocks
Bridget Erin Connor-Feldbaum
Jennifer Aileen Daks
Tyler Harris Dratch
Max Leonard Edwards
Rebecca Lena Good
Justin Phillip Held
Jessie Leah Koppell Rubenstein
Deborah Barnard Sarna

Master of Liberal Jewish Studies

Shawn Eugene Eyer

Master of Jewish Education, Pardes Educators Program

Caleb Allen Adams
Martin Joseph Brophy III
Miriam Farb
Melissa Aviva Frank

Betty K. & Philip Fein Memorial Prize
Outstanding student in Jewish Education
Deborah Barnard Sarna

Sara Feinsilver Prize
Established by HCWA for an outstanding graduating student
Emily Dara Brocks

Leo & Sadie Flax Fund
Proficiency in the study of rabbinics (Judaic Studies)
Ilene Laurie Aube

Rabbi Joseph Marcus Memorial Prize
For a graduate – for excellence in Judaic Studies 
Laura Ann Berry

Benjamin A. Trustman Prize
For general excellence; the highest academic award
Martin Joseph Brophy III

Helen & Isaac Tarmy Scholarship
For excellence
Rebecca Lena Good

Dean Nisson Touroff Memorial Prize
For meritorious work in the field of education and/or psychology
Tyler Harris Dratch

Mid-Career Fellowship Awards
Bridget Erin Connor-Feldbaum
Deborah Barnard Sarna
Emily Dara Brocks
Rebecca Lena Good
Jessie Leah Koppell Rubenstein
Justin Phillip Held
Max Leonard Edwards

Rabbi Nancy Flam

Rabbi Nancy Flam is a pioneer in the field of Jewish healing and contemporary spirituality.  She co-founded the Jewish Healing Center in 1991 and served as director of the Jewish Community Healing Program of Ruach Ami: Bay Area Jewish Healing Center in San Francisco. She served for five years (1999 – 2003) as the Founding Director of The Institute for Jewish Spirituality, a retreat-based learning program for Jewish leaders, before becoming Senior Program Director (2004 – 2019), where she headed retreat-based learning programs for rabbis and community leaders, directed the highly-innovative Prayer Project, and taught on the faculty of the Jewish Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training program. She has served as a consultant for Synagogue 2000, the National Center for Jewish Healing, Romemu Yeshiva, and other emerging Jewish organizations. She currently serves as a spiritual director to many rabbis, cantors and Jewish lay people.

Rabbi Flam earned her B.A. in Religion from Dartmouth College in 1982 (Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude) and her M.A.  in Hebrew Literature from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1986. She was ordained by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1989. She trained in Clinical Pastoral Education (C.P.E.) and has served as volunteer chaplain at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and the Long Island College Hospital. Rabbi Flam teaches widely on the topics of Judaism, healing, and spirituality, and has written on these issues for such publications as Wrestling with the Angel: Jewish Insights on Death and Mourning, edited by Jack Riemer; Jewish Pastoral Care, edited by Dayle Friedman; Best Contemporary American Jewish Writing, edited by Michael Lerner; A New Hasidism: Branches, edited by Arthur Green and Ariel Mayse; and Jewish Mysticism and the Spiritual Life, edited by Fine, Fishbane, and Rose. She is the Series Editor for LifeLights, a Jewish series of informational, inspirational pamphlets on challenges in the emotional and spiritual life.

Rabbi Flam is the mother of two young adult children, and lives in Northampton, Mass., with her husband, Dr. Neil Kudler, and amidst her beloved synagogue community, Congregation B’nai Israel.

>> READ HER REMARKS

Melila Hellner-Eshed

Melila Hellner-Eshed is a senior research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, where she initiated and directs Maskilot, an intensive two program for women doctoral candidates. She has taught Jewish mysticism and Zohar in the department of Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem for the past 25 years.

Hellner-Eshed received her Ph.D. from Hebrew University under the tutelage of Professor Yehuda Liebes.  For the past three decades, she has been a central figure in the Israeli renaissance of study of Jewish texts by Israeli adults of all paths of life in various frameworks. She has been teaching and working with Jewish communities in North America, Europe, and the former Soviet Union for many years. Her publications include A River Flows from Eden: The Language of Mystical Experience in the Zohar (in Hebrew: Alma and Am Oved, 2005; in English:  Stanford University Press, 2009); and Seekers of the Face – The Secrets of the Idra Rabba in the Zohar, published in Hebrew in September 2017. The English translation will be published in summer 2021 by Stanford University Press.

Hellner-Eshed also serves on the faculty of the Institute of Jewish Spirituality and is active in the “Sulha,” a reconciliation project that brings together Israelis and Palestinians.

>> READ HER REMARKS

Questions?

• General Commencement: Contact Shana Burstyn in the
  Office of the President
• Rabbinical & Cantorial Ordination:
  Contact Laurena Rosenberg