Faculty 2010-11
Rabbi Leah R. Berkowitz is the Assistant Rabbi at Judea Reform Congregation in Durham. She grew up in Broomall, PA, and earned her B.A. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and Journalism from Brandeis University. She was ordained in 2008 at Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion, where she also earned masters' degrees in Hebrew Literature and Religious Education. During her studies at HUC-JIR, Rabbi Berkowitz served as a rabbinic intern at hospitals and Hillels, camps and congregations throughout the Northeast. She has had stories and essays published in God: Jewish Choices in Struggling with the Ultimate , Jewish Women’s Literary Annual , and Spirituality 101: The Indispensible Guide to Keeping- or Finding- Your Spiritual Life on Campus, and also contributed to the creation of The Torah: A Women’s Commentary. Rabbi Berkowitz is excited to be a part of the Midrasha team and the Jewish community in the Triangle. It is her goal as a Jewish professional to empower the members of this community to lead their best Jewish lives.
Rabbi Zalman and Yehudis Bluming - Rabbi Zalman is the Rabbi and Director of the Chabad of Durham/Chapel Hill. He grew up in Atlanta and enjoyed a diverse educational background studying in Manchester Eng.& Melbourne, Australia, Jerusalem, Israel & The Far East .His classes have been among the most popular classes in his 5 years thus far teaching at the Midrasha.
Yehudis is the co-director of the Chabad of Durham/Chapel Hill and has traveled around the country running various Chabad youth and teen programs. She's been a counselor, head counselor and the director for Jewish camps for teenagers and has been the teen program coordinator for a high school of 600 teens. She then ran a young adult-teen program for a year in Melbourne Australia.
They spend their summers leading Birthright Israel trips for college students.
Marshall Botvinick has an MFA in Dramaturgy from Harvard and has taught theater at Harvard and Duke, including in the TIP program. His professional dramaturgy credits include productions at the American Reperatory Theater and Man Bites Dog Theater.
Matt Diamond is the Director of the Community Midrasha. He recently helped found the North American Association of Community Hebrew High Schools - a network of 70 schools serving over 11,000 Jewish teens, and served on the Mazkirut and Programming Vaad for the CAJE 31 Jewish education conference.
Matt lived in Israel for 8 years where he worked for USY and NFTY, went to Hebrew U for grad school in political science, and served in the IDF. He has taught "Israeli Politics" at Duke and has published several academic articles about Israel, the Middle East, and Jewish law.
Rabbi John Friedman is the Rabbi of Judea Reform Congregation. He has been teaching the Midrasha 10th graders for many years with his very popular course "Introduction to Plurality and Diversity within the Community at Large
He was born in Kansas City and studied at the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem and Cincinnati where he was ordained in 1976. He has received the Martin Luther King Jr. Keeper of the Dream Award, the Durham Better Human Relations Award and the Elna Spaulding Medal for Social Justice awards for his work in our community. In 1994, Rabbi Friedman was a Charles Merrill Fellow at Harvard University, and he was recently awarded an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew Union College. Rabbi Friedman has served as president of Durham Congregations in Action and the Mid-Atlantic Association of Reform Rabbis, and has been a popular speaker for many civic and religious groups. He has also served as chair of the Interreligious Affairs Committee of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. Rabbi Friedman has written articles that have been published in "The Journal of Reform Judaism," "Brotherhood Magazine," "Judaism," "Compass" and others.
Yael Ariel Goldschmidt is the first Midrasha student to become a Midrasha teacher. She is currently the Judaic Studies teacher at the Lerner School. After growing up in Chapel Hill, Yael received her BA in psychology and political
science from Bar Ilan University in Israel. Yael has also studied at Yeshiva University, at Nishmat, a women’s yeshiva in
Jerusalem, and
at Matan, a postgraduate leadership program for women in
Jewish Studies. Most
recently she worked as a sexual health educator in London for JAT:
Jewish Action and Training for Sexual Health, talking to Jewish elementary,
middle, and high school students about sexual health.
Ty Goldschmidt is completing a PhD in Philosophy at King’s College London. He has an MPhil in Philosophy from Cambridge and a BA with Honours in Philosophy from the University of the Witwatersrand. He has taught philosophy at universities in the US, UK and South Africa. His research is in metaphysics, philosophy of religion and philosophy of mind.
Dr. Sandy Kessler teaches political science at NC State. His specialties are political theory and American political thought. He has edited a version of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America and has written a book entitled Tocqueville's Civil Religion: American Christianity and the Prospects for Freedom. He has long been interested in Jewish approaches to ethical questions and is currently president of Congregation Beth El.
Ilit Ostrovitch-Levi is originally from Holon, Israel. She is currently a visiting scholar at the Duke Law School. She has been a clerk in the Israeli Supreme Court and has two LLM degrees in Law, from Duke and from the IDC in Israel. While clerking at the Israeli Supreme Court she taught young students about constitutional law as part of her clerkship.
Dr. Noah Pickus is Nannerl O. Keohane Director of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University and Associate Research Professor of Public Policy Studies at Duke University. He is the author of True Faith and Allegiance: Immigration and American Civic Nationalism, Becoming American/America Becoming, and Immigration and Citizenship in the 21st Century.
Stephanie Rockitter is a Hebrew teacher at the Lerner School. Stephanie has a MA in Early Childhood Education as well as Education Administration. This is her ninth year teaching, having taught previously as a Reading Specialist and as a classroom teacher. She also has worked as a Hebrew School teacher for the past eight years. Stephanie lived in Israel for eight years and now resides in Raleigh with her two teenage daughters, four cats and two bunnies.
Rabbi Steve Sager is the Rabbi Emeritus of Beth El Congregation and the founder of Sicha. He is a graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. He earned a Ph.D. in Jewish Studies from Duke University in 1989. Rabbi Sager also serves as a lecturer on the faculty of the Duke Divinity School.
Rabbi Sager has taught many classes including a Sunday evening text-study class for Midrasha students for many years.
Dr. Margarita Suarez is an Associate Professor in the Department of Religious and Ethical Studies at Meredith College in Raleigh. Her area of concentration is Women, Religion and Culture, specializing in Global Liberation/Feminist Theologies. Dr. Suarez teaches courses in Anthropology of Religion, Religion and Film, Religions in the United States, World Religions, Women in the Bible and Christian Theology and Ethics. This is her sixth year working on the course for the 10th grade students at Midrasha.