Meah Instructors

Me’ah Faculty

Jay R. Berkovitz is professor of Judaic and Near Eastern studies at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He earned a Ph.D. at Brandeis University and rabbinic ordination (orthodox) in Israel. He has held numerous visiting teaching appointments, recently as Lady Davis Professor of Jewish History at the Hebrew University. His research focuses on early modern Jewish history and law, and his major publications include “The Shaping of Jewish Identity in 19th-Century France” (Wayne State, 1989); “Rites and Passages: The Beginnings of Modern Jewish Culture in France, 1650-1860” (UPenn, 2004); and “Tradition and Revolution in Early Modern France,” published in Hebrew by Mercaz Zalman Shazar in 2007. In 2011, Berkovitz was awarded the inaugural National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Scholar Fellowship at the Center for Jewish History for his work on the intersection of law and history. His newest book, “Protocols of Justice: The Rabbinic Court of Metz, 1771-1790,” is scheduled for publication by Brill Academic Publishers in 2013. Berkovitz is co-editor-in-chief of the academic journal Jewish History. He and his family maintain homes in Newton and Jerusalem.

David Bernat received a bachelor’s degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary and Ph.D. in biblical studies from Brandeis University. He is the author of “Sign of the Covenant: Circumcision in the Priestly Traditions,” co-editor of “Religion and Violence: The Biblical Heritage” (with Jonathan Klawans, BU and previous Me’ah faculty member) and editor of the forthcoming “Sharpened Arrows: Violence in Rabbinic Discourse.” Bernat is the Jewish chaplain at Wellesely College, Babson College and Olin College of Engineering and has a visiting appointment in Judaic studies at UMass Amherst. He has been with Me'ah since 1998, and led Meah's Bible/Rabbinics summer Israel tour.

Avi Bernstein is a veteran Me’ah teacher. His articles have appeared in the Yearbook of the Leo Baeck Institute, Religious Studies Review and the Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy. He has served as a contributing editor of The Yearbook of the Philosophy of Education and occasionally contributes to the blog Athens and Jerusalem Today. Bernstein holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University. In 2010-11, he taught English and American literature at Boston Preparatory Charter Public School and Waltham (Mass.) Senior High School.

Marc Brettler is the Dora Golding Professor of Bible in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University, where he was awarded the Michael L. Walzer Teaching Prize. He is the author of many articles on literary and historical aspects of biblical texts, including being co-editor of “The Jewish Study Bible” (Oxford University Press; 2004), winner of a National Jewish Book Award in 2004. Brettler has been a Me’ah instructor since the program’s inception.

Reuven Cohn is an adult Jewish educator and an attorney. He is a veteran teacher in the Me’ah program and also teaches for the Me'ah Graduate Institute, Hebrew College Online and Maimonides School. He holds rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva University, a law degree from Yale and has done advanced graduate work in Jewish studies at Harvard University. Among his areas of interest are Jewish interpretations of the Bible, the literary development of the Mishnah and Talmud, and history of the prayer book.

Alanna E. Cooper is a cultural anthropologist whose work deals with Jews of Muslim lands. Her focus on central Asia’s Bukharan Jews has taken her to field sites in Uzbekistan, and to Queens, N.Y., and Tel Aviv, where she has done research among this scattered immigrant group. Cooper holds a Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Boston University. She teaches courses in Jewish culture and history and has held research fellowships at Harvard University’s Center for the Study of World Religions, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and, most recently, at the University of Michigan’s Frankel Institute of Judaic Studies. Her recent publications include “Rituals in Flux: Courtship and Marriage Among Bukharan Jews,” (published in “Bukharan Jews in the 20th Century”) and “Remembering Home and Exile: Memoirs of Jews of Muslim Lands (published in AJS Perspectives).

Lynne Heller is a graduate of the Yeshivah of Flatbush and its Midrasha. She earned a bachelor’s with honors in English and education from Brooklyn College, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and master’s and doctoral degrees in English and comparative literature from New York University. She has taught Bible in several of the adult-learning programs of Hebrew College and CJP, including the Early Morning Text Study program, Genesis Bible study program, Ikkarim, Kol Isha, and the Institute for Jewish Studies in Lexington, Mass.

Rabbi Dan Judson is the director of placement and professional development for the Hebrew College Rabbinical School. He is also a doctoral student in Jewish history at Brandeis University. Prior to coming to the Rabbinical School, he served for 10 years as the spiritual leader at Temple Beth David in Canton, Mass. In 2003, Judson was the Daniel Jeremy Silver Fellow at Harvard University. He has co-authored a number of books on Jewish rituals, including “The Rituals and Practices of a Jewish Life: A Handbook for Personal Spiritual Renewal” and “The Jewish Pregnancy Book: A Resource for the Soul, Body and Mind During Pregnancy, Birth and the First Three Months. His articles on Jewish history have appeared in the American Jewish Archives Journal.

Deeana Copeland Klepper holds a Ph.D. in medieval European history from Northwestern University. She is currently an associate professor of history and religion at Boston University, where she teaches a variety of courses on the religious culture of the Middle Ages. She has published articles on late-medieval Christian-Jewish relations and is completing a book on polemics, interpretation and Jewish texts in the Middle Ages.

Shana Komitee holds a master’s in modern Jewish thought from Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a Ph.D. in performance studies, with a focus on Martin Buber's dialogic thought and his philosophical influence on 20th century American theater artists, from Harvard University. She has been a teacher in the Harvard undergraduate and Boston adult-education communities for the last five years. Outside academia, she has written two plays and worked for the Obama for America New Hampshire campaign.

Shari Lowin is an associate professor of religious studies at Stonehill College. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. She has taught at University of Chicago, Yeshiva University, Brooklyn College and in Ma’ayan. Lowin is fluent in Arabic and has researched and published on a number of topics comparing Judaism and Islam, including her dissertation “The Making of a Forefather: Abraham in Islamic and Jewish Exegetical Narratives.”

Maud Mandel is associate professor of Judaic studies and history at Brown University. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College and master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Michigan. Her current book project, “Beyond Antisemitism: Muslims and Jews in Contemporary France,” has been awarded an advance contract by Princeton University Press. Her most recent article, “Transnationalism and Its Discontents Suring the 1948 Arab-Israeli War,” appeared in the journal Diaspora. She teaches courses on many aspects of modern Jewish history, including history of the Holocaust, Zionism and the birth of the state of Israel, and history of American Jews.

Jacob Meskin is academic director for adult learning at Hebrew College and assistant professor of Jewish thought and education at the college. He has taught at Princeton University, Rutgers University, Williams College, Yeshiva University’s Revel Graduate School, Lehigh University and Rollins College. He earned his master’s and doctoral degrees from the from the Department of Religion at Princeton University. His articles have appeared in Modern Judaism, The Journal of Religion, CrossCurrents, Judaism, Soundings, and Levinas Studies, as well as in several edited volumes. Meskin has offered many lectures and adult education courses at synagogues in the Boston area and has served as scholar in residence at several synagogues and at Yavneh Family Camp. As an educational consultant, he teamed up with R. Benjamin Samuels to create the curriculum for Boston’s popular Ikkarim program, a yearlong, text-based and experientially oriented introduction to Jewish values for parents of preschool children. He is currently working on a manuscript on the role of Jewish tradition in the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas.

Rabbi Benjamin Samuels, a veteran Me’ah instructor, holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature and master’s degrees in both bible and medieval Jewish history from Yeshiva University. He is currently completing a Ph.D. in religion and science at Boston University. He is the rabbi of Congregation Sha'arei Tefillah in Newton, Mass.

Michael Satlow is professor of Judaic studies and religious studies at Brown University. He specializes in rabbinics and early Judaism and is author most recently of “Creating Judaism: History, Tradition, Practice” (2006). He has also developed a free podcast, From Israelite to Jew (http://msatlow.blogspot.com), and an interactive database of inscriptions from Israel/Palestine (www.brown.edu/iip). Satlow received a Ph.D. in ancient Judaism from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1993. He has held fellowships from the John S. Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies.

Rabbi Meir Sendor is spiritual leader of the Young Israel of Sharon. He holds rabbinic ordination from Yeshiva University and a doctorate in medieval Jewish jistory from Harvard University. Sendor lectures widely on Jewish history, philosophy, law and mysticism.

Jeffrey Spitzer is the chair of the Department of Rabbinic Literature at Gann Academy, the New Jewish High School, in Waltham, Mass. Spitzer is a graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he did doctoral work on the social history of the ancient synagogue. Spitzer was formerly the senior educator at Jewish Family and Life and editor of the Jewish texts section of the acclaimed MyJewishLearning.com website (developed in conjuction with Hebrew College). In addition to his work with Me'ah and the Gann Academy, Spitzer is also on the interdenominational editorial board of BabagaNewz magazine, a Jewish values magazine for children in grades four through seven.

Rabbi David Starr held the Charles R. Bronfman Visiting Associate Professor in Jewish Communal Innovation at Brandeis University. He served as the Jerusalem Fellow at the Mandel Leadership Institute in 2007 and the rabbinic adviser at Harvard Radcliffe Hillel from 1994 to 1999. An expert on the subjects of modern Jewish history, Jewish education and adult Jewish learning in America, he was the founding dean of the Me’ah program. Starr holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University and rabbinical ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary.