Founder and Director
Anthony Knopf
Rabbi Anthony Knopf is Rabbi of Congregation Beth Ora in Montreal. He received semicha from Rabbi Zalman Nechemia Goldberg, graduated in Theology and Religious Studies from the University of Cambridge, and is an alumnus of Tikvah’s Advanced Institute. He is a current member of Federation CJA’s Passport to Jewish Life Fellowship run by M2: The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education.
Rabbi Knopf has published articles on Jewish ethics and education in Tradition, Hakira, Conversations, Enroute, Degel, Torah Musings and OU Torah as well as his own website, Jewishethicalwisdom.com. Rabbi Knopf authored a chapter for the volume Morasha Kehillat Yaakov: Essays in Honour of Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, entitled “Mitzvah Observance – The Appropriate Motivation”. He is the founder of The Rise Together Project of Montreal.
Advisory Board
Shalom Berger
Rabbi Dr Shalom Z. Berger heads the English-language programming for Herzog College at its Jerusalem, Alon Shvut and Migdal Oz campuses.
He has extensive experience in both formal and informal educational settings, having taught and held administrative positions in day schools in the United States and post-high school programs in Israel, as well as educational director in American summer camps. His doctoral dissertation, which focused on gap-year Israel study, was published as part of Flipping Out? Myth or Fact: The Impact of the “Year in Israel.”
Rabbi Berger initiated the Lookjed listserv that connects thousands of Jewish educators across the globe, and is Founding Editor of Jewish Educational Leadership.
Sharon Freundel
Ms. Sharon Freundel is the managing director of the Jewish Education Innovation Challenge and teaches adult Jewish education classes throughout the Greater Washington DC area. Sharon was previously department chair for TaNaKH and Torah SheBa’al Peh and was the Mashgicha of the Upper School at the Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy, and was Director of Jewish Life at the Milton Gottesman Jewish Day School.
Barry Kislowicz
Rabbi Dr Barry Kislowicz is the CEO of Educating for Impact, an initiative designed to support Jewish communities in Europe through increasing the impact of their Jewish schools. He previously served as Head of the Fuchs Mizrachi School in Cleveland, as faculty member and department chair at Herzog College, and as Global Education Director for the Center for Educational Technology in Israel. He holds rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva University and a doctorate in education from Columbia University Teachers College. Rabbi Kislowicz is a recipient of a Bronfman Fellowship, a Wexner Graduate Fellowship and Covenant Foundation Pomegranate Prize.
Rabbi Kislowicz is the author of Parenting in Perspective: Timeless Wisdom, Modern Application.
Thomas Lickona
Dr Thomas Lickona is a developmental psychologist and educator, described in Moral Education: A Handbook as “the father of modern character education.” He is professor of education emeritus and founding director of the Center for the 4th and 5th Rs (Respect ad Responsibility) at the State University of New York at Cortland, where he has done national award-winning work in teacher and parent education. He is the author of nine books on moral development and character education, including Raising Good Children, Educating for Character, Character Matters, Sex, Love and You, and How to Raise Kind Kids.
A past president of the Association for Moral Education, Dr Lickona speaks around the world on fostering moral values and character development in schools, families and communities. He writes a blog for Psychology Today called “Raising Kind Kids.”
David Pelcovitz
Dr David Pelcovitz holds the Gwendolyn and Joseph Straus Chair in Psychology and Jewish Education at the Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration at Yeshiva University. In addition, Dr Pelcovitz is an instructor in pastoral counseling at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. He has consulted extensively with the Jewish community in the United States, Europe and Israel on a wide range of issues facing children and adolescents. His most recent publication was Balanced Parenting, a book he wrote in collaboration with his father, Rabbi Raphael Pelcovitz on parenting from a Jewish perspective.
Gil Perl
Rabbi Dr Gil Perl is the Head of School at Kohelet Yeshiva and Co-Designer and Creator of the Yeshiva Lab School. He previously served as Dean of the Margolin Hebrew Academy/Feinstone Yeshiva of the South and Associate Head of School at Yeshiva University’s High School for Boys. Rabbi Perl writes and lectures widely on topics relating to contemporary Jewish education.
Rivka Press Schwartz
Dr Rivka Press Schwartz has spent 20 years in the field of Jewish secondary and post-secondary education. Dr Schwartz currently serves as Associate Principal, General Studies at SAR High School, and as a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of America. She lectures widely on issues of contemporary importance in the Orthodox community.
Shaul Robinson
Jeffrey Saks
Rabbi Jeffrey Saks is a rabbi, educator, writer and editor who has published widely on Jewish thought, education and literature. He is the co-founder of ATID – The Academy for Torah Initiatives and Directions in Jewish Education, a research institute and center for training Modern Orthodox educators in Israel and the United States. In 2007, ATID launched WebYeshiva.org, the world’s first fully interactive online yeshiva with students from the entire world. Rabbi Saks is the editor of Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought.
Rabbi Saks was formerly a faculty member at Yeshiva University High School for Girls in New York and administrator of Yeshivat Hamivtar in Efrat. In 1997 he was awarded a two-year fellowship at the Mandel School for Educational Leadership where he persued research in the philosophy of Jewish education, remaining as an adjunct faculty of the Mandel’s Foundation’s Visions of Jewish Education Project.
Shlomo Zuckier
Rabbi Shlomo Zuckier, a founder of The Lehrhaus, a PhD candidate in Ancient Judaism at Yale University and a member of Yeshiva University’s Kollel Elyon. Previously, he served as Director of the Orthodox Union’s Learning Initiative on Campus at Yale University. Rabbi Zuckier is a graduate of the Wexner, Tikvah and Kupietzky Kodshim Fellowships and has lectured and taught widely across North America. He serves on the Editorial Committee of Tradition and is co-editor of Torah and Western Thought: Intellectual Portraits of Orthodoxy and Modernity.
The Jewish Moral Education Forum
