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Meet the Team
Ezra Kopelowitz, PhD.
Co-Director
Ezra is a sociologist whose expertise is in Jewish education, community, and issues of collective Jewish identity. He has published books and articles on these topics. He is the CEO of Research Success Technologies, a company specializing in research and evaluation for Jewish organizations. Ezra teaches a course on “Jewish Peoplehood for Jewish Professionals,” for the Spertus Institute’s (Chicago) MA program for Jewish Professional Studies. The course focuses on distilling core collective Jewish values that inform the work of Jewish professionals.
Born in South Africa, Ezra moved to the United States as a child, living in Israel since 1990. Ezra lives in Kibbutz Hannaton, Israel. He is married to Debbie and has four children.
Iris Posklinsky, PhD.
Senior Researcher
Dr. Iris Posklinsky is a community social worker specializing in partnership development and management. With two decades of experience strengthening relationships between Israel and overseas communities, she served as a community representative and a partnership director with several Jewish communities in the US, Canada, and the UK.
Iris brings extensive background in community planning and development, practicing, researching, and teaching in the field. As such, she was responsible for many projects serving diverse populations in Israel and overseas. To name a few: the first strategic engagement of a new Jewish community in downtown Vancouver, feasibility study which resulted in launching a new Neighborhood House in Canada’s poorest community, planning and directing several international youth and young adults leadership programs, and a multifaith women dialogue initiative.
Her areas of research are partnerships, transitions in philanthropic relationships, and community work.
Jonathan Golden, PhD.
Peoplehood Pedagogy & Research Associate
Dr. Jonathan Golden is the founder of HeartStance Education Consulting, a firm which supports Israel education and civics education in schools, camps, and nonprofits. He teaches at Hebrew College and the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America and serves as a fellow at the Center for Jewish Peoplehood Education.
He was the Israel Curriculum Coordinator and a history teacher at Gann Academy, a pluralistic Jewish high school in Waltham, MA where he taught from 1999 to 2023. A graduate of Princeton University, he received his M.J.Ed. from Hebrew College and Ph.D. from Brandeis University. At Brandeis, he studied American Jewish history under the tutelage of Professor Jonathan Sarna and wrote a dissertation entitled From Cooperation to Confrontation: The Rise and Fall of the Synagogue Council of America.
He participated in the Schusterman Center Summer Institute for Israel Studies which in 2022 included participants from Abraham Accords countries (Morocco, Bahrain, UAE) and taught the Myra Kraft Seminar on Israel to first year students of the Hornstein program at Brandeis University.
Kristine Leduc
Research Associate
Kristine graduated from one of the most prestigious universities in the Philippines with a strong background in social sciences. She has over a decade of experience in data analysis, applied statistics, scientific survey design techniques and market research. She specializes in market segmentation and behavioral analytics. She began her career with two global market research firms, Kantar TNS and GfK, in which she trained in ad-hoc and syndicated research methods both in the Philippines and Singapore. She also worked as a statistical data analyst for Samsung, starting their local field force from scratch and managing an in-house market research team of 70 people.
Born and raised in the Philippines, Kristine moved to Rennes, France in 2016 and currently lives there with her husband and their cat.
Hadar Franco Galor, PhD.
COO & Senior Researcher at ReST
Dr. Franco Galor is a sociologist specializing in institutional innovation in areas of gender, community, education and criminology. She is a lecturer at the Ono Academic College in Israel, with extensive experience in applied and academic research with a focus on public opinion, the interface of the judiciary with legislative processes and the implementation of organizational change. Hadar’s professional experience includes working as a senior advisor to the Chief Scientist at the Ministry of Internal Security, building academic courses for groups with heterogeneous socio-demographic characteristics among Jewish and Arab Israelis, including ultra-Orthodox, religious and secular Jews. Hadar also worked as an associate director of an organization promoting educational innovation in Arab-Israeli society. She remains active as a volunteer activist for social justice causes in Israel.
Hadar lives in Emek Hefer, Israel with her husband and three children.
Jake Gillis, MA
Associate Director & Research Associate
Jake was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He attended the University of Pittsburgh, where he studied Psychology and Jewish Studies. He studied abroad at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem where he interned at Hillel Israel. After university, Jake began his career in Jewish Education at Ramah’s high school program in Israel, TRY, and then at the American Hebrew Academy. He followed this with a year of study at Hadar in New York City and, soon after, made aliyah and has lived in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv since 2019. Jake spent a year at the Pardes Institute for Jewish Studies while working towards his MA in Jewish Education through the Jewish Theological Seminary, which he completed in 2023. Jake’s MA thesis research focused on issues of Jewish Peoplehood in Jewish education.
Jake lives in Tel Aviv with his wife, Lior.
Jonny Whine
COO
After many years working in experiential Jewish education and Jewish community work in his native England and in Israel, Jonny's interest in the subject of Jewish Peoplehood was sparked when working as a director of the mechina kdam tzvait 'Kol Ami - the Jewish Peoplehood Leadership Academy' and later as the Director of the Western Galilee Partnership of the Jewish Agency.
He has also worked as a graphic designer and currently balances his work at CJPE whilst leading hikes in the Israeli countryside for Paratrek, an Israeli company leading the field of making the wilderness accesible to people with disabilities and wheelchair users.
Jonny lives in Kibbutz Hannaton in the Galil and with his wife and three children.
Shlomi Ravid, Phd.
Co-Founder & Co-Director
Dr. Shlomi Ravid has been a pioneer in developing Peoplehood education. In his 35 years of involvement in Jewish Global affairs he was the founding director of the Israel Center of San Francisco, the founding director of the International School for Jewish Peoplehood Studies at Beit Hatfutsot, and the founder of the Center for Jewish Peoplehood Education. During his term in San Francisco he founded with the Helen Diller Family Foundation, the Diller Teen Fellows program.
Shlomi initiated in 2008 and edits the Peoplehood Papers. He has published over forty articles and studies on Jewish Peoplehood and led the creation of the Peoplehood Education Toolkit. He is currently on faculty at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership.
Shlomi is a member of Kibbutz Glil-Yam where he was born, married to Linda (originally from San Francisco) and considers his four children as his biggest contribution to humanity. His PhD is in Philosophy from Tel Aviv University explored the relations between norms and values and examined the changing Kibbutz as a case study. His current academic focus is community and Jewish Peoplehood.
Resources
PEOPLEHOOD TOOLKIT
A comprehensive resource for Jewish educators and communal leaders interested in questions of Jewish collective belonging, global community and mutual responsibility that includes tools that address the what, how, and my of Peoplehood programming.
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