Miller Center for Interreligious Learning & Leadership: Faculty & Staff

Liz Aeschlimann

Liz Aeschlimann has spent the last decade helping people build transformative relationships and draw on our collective wisdom traditions to take powerful action. A facilitator, community organizer, and interfaith chaplain, Liz has organized congregations in New Bedford and Fall River, supported Jewish student leaders at Tufts University and Vassar College, and facilitated collective learning experiences about everything from end-of-life planning to closing the racial wealth gap.

A proud Midwesterner, Liz has an M.Div. with a concentration in Judaism from Harvard Divinity School and a B.A. in Cognitive Science from Carleton College. She shares a Watertown triple-decker with her wife, sister-in-law, two close friends, and her daughter Raya.

Rev. Dr. Soren M. Hessler

Rev. Dr. Soren M. Hessler is instructor of Christian and interreligious studies at Hebrew College and an advisory board member of the Journal of Interreligious Studies. He is an elder in full-connection in the West Ohio Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church and served for nine years as a member of the ministry staff of Boston University’s Marsh Chapel. Currently, Rev. Dr. Hessler is the Coordinator of Assessment for the Faculty of Theology at Huron University College in London, Ontario. He previously served as Director of Graduate Academic Services at Drew University and as Associate Director of the Miller Center from its inception in 2016 through September 2018. He co-edited Words to Live By: Sacred Sources for Interreligious Engagement (Orbis, 2018). Rev. Dr. Hessler teaches the Introduction to Christianity course in the Rabbinical School curriculum. He holds master’s degrees in church administration, divinity, and higher education administration as well as a PhD in practical theology from Boston University and his research emerges among the intersections of theological education administration, interreligious studies, and Methodist studies.

Dr. Axel Marc Oaks Takács

Axel is an assistant professor in the Department of Religion at Seton Hall University and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Interreligious Studies. He completed his doctorate at Harvard Divinity School in comparative (interreligious) theology, Islamic Studies, and Catholic theology in 2019. As a constructive theologian, his scholarship aims to read pre-modern sources as resources to contemporary questions. His dissertation and current research focuses on poetry, poetics, the imagination, and social imaginary as ways to understand the Christian theology of the Incarnation and the Islamic theology of the imagination. His tangential academic interest attends to how the ideology of capitalism functions as a modern religion that effectively restricts our collective imagination of alternative ways to relate with each other. He lives in Maplewood, New Jersey, with his spouse (Kim), their child (Emery), and two rescue poodles (Donovan and Ducky).

Rabbi Or Rose

Rabbi Or Rose is the founding Director of the Betty Ann Greenbaum Miller Center for Interreligious Learning & Leadership of Hebrew College.

Before assuming this position in 2016, he worked in various administrative and teaching capacities at Hebrew College for over a decade, including serving as a founding faculty member and Associate Dean of the Rabbinical School. Rabbi Rose was also one of the creators of CIRCLE, The Center for Interreligious & Community Leadership Education, cosponsored by Hebrew College and Andover Newton Theological School (2007-2017). 

In addition to his work at Hebrew College, Rose has taught for the Bronfman Youth Fellowships, The Wexner Graduate Fellowship, Me’ah, and in a variety of other academic, religious, and civic contexts throughout North America and in Israel.

Rose is the co-editor of Speaking Torah: Spiritual Teachings from Around the Maggid’s Table (Jewish Lights), and the award-winning anthology, My Neighbor’s Faith: Stories of Interreligious Encounter, Growth, and Transformation (Orbis), and the anthology Words To Live By: Sacred Sources for Interreligious Engagement (Orbis 2018). Rose is the co-editor of Speaking Torah: Spiritual Teachings from Around the Maggid’s Table (Jewish Lights), and the award-winning anthology, My Neighbor’s Faith: Stories of Interreligious Encounter, Growth, and Transformation (Orbis), and the anthology Words To Live By: Sacred Sources for Interreligious Engagement (Orbis 2018). His most recent publications include My Legs Were Praying: A Biography of Abraham Joshua Heschel (Monkfish 2025); With the Best of Intentions: Interreligious Missteps & Unexpected Learnings (Orbis 2023) and the co-edited volume, Rabbi Zalman Schachter: Essential Teachings.

In 2009-2010, he was selected as a member of the Shalom Hartman Institute’s inaugural North American Scholar’s Circle. In 2014, Northeastern University honored him for his interreligious educational efforts.

Rev. Rob Schenck

Rev. Rob Schenck, D.Min. is an ordained evangelical minister and a progressive voice of dissent in his religious community.

Over a 40-year career, he has served as an addictions counselor, youth director, pastor, global humanitarian outreach worker, and a minister to top elected and appointed officials in Washington, DC. In the aftermath of 9/11, Schenck helped lead an unprecedented international dialogue between North American evangelical leaders and North African Islamic scholars. Shortly afterward, he was the subject of Abigail Disney’s Emmy Award-winning documentary, The Armor of Light, a critique of the American evangelical embrace of popular gun culture, eventually leading to his break from evangelical orthodoxy on guns, abortion, and the public display of religious symbols.

Schenck holds degrees in Bible and Theology, Religion, and Christian Ministry and a Doctor of Ministry in strategic leadership with a concentration in church and state. He has been a visiting academic at Oxford University where recently co-convened a historic colloquium on racialized Christian Nationalism. Schenck tells the story of his religious journey in a memoir, Costly Grace: An Evangelical Minister’s Rediscovery of Faith, Hope and Love (HarperCollins). His essays on the intersection of religion and public life have been published by Religion News Service, USA Today, TIME Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and The New York Times, among other national journals.

Marilyn Stern

Marilyn Stern joined Hebrew College in 2015, as public events coordinator and associate director of adult learning. During her tenure at Hebrew College she has held the positions of public events coordinator, associate director of Adult education, and community engagement administrator. She currently serves as Director of Special Projects for Hebrew College’s Miller Center for Interreligious Learning and Leadership Prior to her work at Hebrew College, Ms. Stern spent twenty years as a Jewish educational professional, directing family, youth, and adult programs at Temple Isaiah in Lexington and Congregation Eitz Chayim in Cambridge. In her congregational work, Ms. Stern worked closely with parents from a variety of faith traditions, who were raising Jewish children, to help them find their place in the Jewish community. Ms. Stern, grew up in the Los Angeles area, where she graduated with her B.A. in History from UCLA. She has lived in the Boston area for over 30 years and lives in Jamaica Plain with her husband, David. Ms. Stern received Certificate in Family Education at Hebrew College in 1995 and her M.A. Degree in Jewish Education at Hebrew College in 1996.