Hebrew College Spring 2023 Celebration Recap
Opening the Gates: Celebrating our Interconnection
Thank you to everyone who joined us in person and virtually on May 4, 2023 for Hebrew College’s Spring 2023 Event: Opening the Gates: Celebrating Our Interconnection. Your generosity and ruach shined throughout the evening.
Honoree Video: Andy Offit & Dan Miller
ANDY OFFIT
In the spring of 2017, Andy Offit embarked on a journey as Chair of the Board of Hebrew College. This was his goal: Hebrew College to be in a new home, debt free with a balanced and sustainable budget for the first time in over 25 years.
Andy enjoys a steep learning curve and a good challenge. He also demands hard-working and high-energy partners, honest reflection for necessary adjustments, vision, detailed plans, and collaboration with an eye on the numbers. Andy is a numbers guy. Andy also likes to accomplish his goals. And he did. Hebrew College affirmed his skillset—and an opportunity to learn many new skills!!
He chaired the Hebrew College board while taking the LSAT, applying, attending and graduating from law school, and passing the bar. And as Hebrew College stepped into its strong and healthy future, so did Andy as a lawyer, his third professional iteration.
Andy’s passion for learning includes voracious reading about American history, United States presidents, his beloved New England Patriots, the criminal justice system, and anything his three adult sons are also interested in. He loves boats, trucks and bicycles. He has dedicated energy and time to understanding and mitigating the structures that create inequality and instability in this country. Andy’s other past board work includes Solomon Schechter Day School of Greater Boston, Social Innovation Forum, My Life My Choice, Courageous Parents Network, and Beaver Country Day.
Andy was born and raised in Pikesville, MD, surrounded by a big, warm and loving family. He attended Emory University, and with his CPA, worked in public accounting for three years in Atlanta. He attended the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania followed by 13 years at Fidelity Investments as an analyst and portfolio manager. He enjoyed 12 wildly successful years as a partner at Wellington Management. He left the investment business after 25 years influenced by his wife’s soulful and meaningful work as a second career, Hebrew College Rabbi. Andy then graduated from the Harvard Kennedy School with a MPA degree, followed by working for the City of Somerville as special assistant to Mayor Joe Curtatone for seven years. The eye-opening experience led him to believe that change in the system happens in the courtroom. In spring of 2021, he graduated from Suffolk Law School. He is admitted to the bar in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Andy is adored by and devoted to his three sons, Adam, David and Yoni, and his wife, Rabbi Suzanne Offit `09.
DAN MILLER
Dan is the founding supporter, in memory of his late wife, Betty Ann z”l, of the Miller Center for Interreligious Learning & Leadership at Hebrew College, where he is a past Board member and current Finance and Investment Committee member. He is also a 1999 Me’ah graduate.
Among his other philanthropic interests, Dan is a long-time supporter of the Rashi School, where he sits on the Board of Trustees and is a member of its Budget & Finance Committee. Dan helped establish the Betty Ann Greenbaum Miller Center for Jewish Healing at Jewish Family & Children’s Service, also named in memory of his late wife. He has also been a long-standing member of the Investment Committee of the Squam Lakes Association, one of the country’s earliest non-profit conservation organizations dating back well over 100 years.
Dan is a Partner and Director of Equities at GW&K Investment Management in Boston where, for the past 14 years, he has managed all aspects of the firm’s global equity business, including portfolio management, research and trading. This follows a career of over two decades at Putnam Investments, where he was the Chief Investment Officer of the firm’s Specialty Growth Equity Group and managed the mutual fund of the decade in the 1990s. He began his career in the late 1970s as an analyst at Morgan Stanley. Dan received a BS with highest honors from the University of California Berkeley in 1979 and an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business in 1983. He earned the Chartered Financial Analyst designation in 1986 and is a member of the CFA Society Boston and the CFA Institute.
Dan spends his weekdays in the Boston area, although he and his partner, Deborah Ancona, spend as much free time as possible at their lake home in New Hampshire where they particularly enjoy hiking and biking. Dan’s two sons, Adam and Matthew, attended the Rashi School, and were Prozdor students in their teen years.
Honoree Blessings
blessing for Andy offit by Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld, Hebrew College President
Blessing for Dan Miller by Rabbi Or Rose
Esther Award: Nancy Schön
Esther Award and Dedication of Sculpture
International sculptor Nancy Schön’s newly commissioned sculpture will live in the Hebrew College Courtyard to honor generations of Hebrew College donors. Schön created the famous “Make Way for Ducklings” sculpture in the Boston Public Garden (and another one in Moscow) and has created over a dozen prominent public sculptures and many for private collections.
Presentation of the Esther Award to Nancy Schön by Hebrew College President Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld
Panel Discussion: A Dialogue of Devotion
A Dialogue of Devotion with Miller Center Fellows
Panelist Bios
Rabbi Batya Ellinoy `22, Moderator
Rabbi Batya Elana Ellinoy received rabbinic ordination from Hebrew College, graduating with a Master’s in Jewish Education. She was privileged to work with the Miller Center in a variety of capacities over the last five years and she is currently serving as the Upper School Director at Temple Beth Elohim in Wellesley, MA. Rabbi Ellinoy is also completing a multi-year training to be a certified practitioner in Somatic Experiencing®, a psychobiological approach to help resolve trauma and stress disorders, and she is committed to integrating this healing approach into her spiritual leadership.
Panelists
Meital Baker
Dignity Project Fellow, 2022-2023
Meital is a senior at Gann Academy in Waltham, MA. She comes from a strong Jewish background and her family belongs to three different synagogues. At her school, she created a Minyan (prayer group) that is aimed at maximizing women’s roles within Jewish law. She is the co-leader of the Gann club CABB- connections awareness and breaking barriers at Gann. She plans on taking a gap year in Israel after she graduates and will then return to attend the University of Maryland.
Shruti Gupta
BILI Fellow, 2019-2020/ BILI Alumni Liaison, 2020-2021
Shruti was a Miller Center Building Interfaith Leadership Initiative (BILI) fellow from 2019-2020, while studying political science at Boston University. She continued on as the BILI program’s alumni liaison from 2020-2021. Currently, she works at MIT supporting their free digital education initiatives and is heading to graduate school in the fall to study data science.
LaShyra Nolen
Boston Bridges Fellow, 2021-2022
Born and raised in Southern California, LaShyra “Lash” Nolen is a writer, activist, and dual-degree MD/MPP student at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where she serves as student council president of her medical school class—the first documented Black woman to hold this leadership position. Additionally, her voice has been featured in Nature, National Public Radio (NPR) and Teen Vogue, and she was a participant in the 2021-2022 Boston Bridges program.
Watch the Musical Performances
Piskhu Li פתחו לי (Nitra Yeshiva)
B’chol Darkecha Da’eyhu בכל דרכיך דעיהו (Chabad)
Romemu רוממו
Ashorer Shira אשורר שירה (Morocco)
Musicians
Rabbi Jessica Kate Meyer `14, Vocals
Jessica Kate Meyer is a prayer leader, storyteller, vocalist, and rabbi, who served as rabbi-hazzan at Romemu in NYC, and most recently, at The Kitchen in San Francisco. She has studied sacred Jewish music with masters from Ashkenazi and Mizrahi traditions and has performed as a vocalist with ensembles in the United States and Israel. In a previous life, Jessica appeared in film, theater, and television projects in Europe and the United States: most notably, as a principal role in the Oscar-winning film, The Pianist.
Oren Neiman — Guitar and mandolin
George Lernis — Percussion
Hadar Ahuvia — Hebrew College rabbinical student — vocals
Julia Sabra, Hebrew College rav-hazzan student — guitar and vocals
Sam Tygiel, Hebrew College rabbinical student — vocals
Event Planning Committee
Nancy Kaplan Belsky
Rabbi Neal Gold
Rabbi Jessica Lowenthal
Rabbi Sonia Saltzman
Susan Schechter
Myra Snyder
Host Committee
Geraldine Acuña Sunshine and Gabriel Sunshine
Julie Altman and Alex Sagan
Deborah Ancona
Rabbi Sharon and Shimon Cohen Anisfeld
Mark Atkins and Miho Sato
Rabbi Marc Baker
Beverly Bavly
Chester and Diane Black
Michelle and Darren Black
Rabbi Danny Burkeman
Harvey and Marsha Chasen
Carol and Carl Chudnofsky
Carol and Stephen Cohen
Lisa Popik Coll and Arieh Coll
Leslie and Alan Crane
Karen and Robert Deresiewicz
Suzanne and David Diamond
Rabbi Jevin and Dr. Janine Eagle
Deborah and Ronald Feinstein
Renée and Steven Finn
Fern Fisher and Jack Eiferman
Ronald Gluck and Liz Brody Gluck
Shira Goodman and Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz
Lillian and Richard Gray
Louis Grossman and Amy Gerson
Beryl and David Hoffman
Elizabeth and Daniel Jick
Rita J. and Stanley H. Kaplan Family Foundation, Inc.:
Nancy and Mark Belsky, Susan B. Kaplan, Scott K. Belsky, Gila Belsky Modell
Rabbi Jamie and Harold Kotler
Debbie and Todd Krasnow
Lizbeth and George Krupp
Lydia and Bernie Kukoff
Alice and Rabbi Van Lanckton
Sara Lee
Marcia and Alan Leifer
Anne and Rabbi Rim Meirowitz
Yael Miller and Stuart Cole
Tara Mohr and Eric Ries
Beth and Michael Moskowitz
Sara Moss and Michael Gould
Myra Musicant and Howard Cohen
Rabbi Suzanne Offit
Suzanne G. Offit
Priebatsch Family:
Suzanne G. Priebatsch, Seth Priebatsch, Daniella Priebatsch Place
Amy and Bob Rands
Cantor Hollis Schachner
Susan and Bob Schechter
Pamela and James Schwartz
Ellen and Steven Segal
Nancy Antonacci Shaich
Susan Shevitz and Lawrence Bailis
Amy and Ross Silverstein
Myra and Robert Snyder
Sarah Sonnenfeld Noked and Ori Noked
Carol and Steven Targum
Diane Troderman and Harold Grinspoon
Stephen and Susan Wilchins
Arnee R. and Walter A. Winshall
Rose Zoltek-Jick