Who We Are
High Holiday Service Leaders
Rabbi Judith Hauptman, Service Leader, Manhattan
Rabbi Josh Cahan, Service Leader, Brooklyn
Rabbi Joanna Samuels, Service Leader, Queens
Rabbi Elianna Yolkut, Service Leader, Manhattan
Josh Gorfinkle, Cantorial Soloist, Manhattan
Stan Alpert, Hazzan Sheni, Manhattan
Pesach Leaders
Rabbi Judith Hauptman, Leader, Main Hall Passover Seder
Josh Gorfinkle, Cantorial Soloist, Main Hall Passover Seder
Gadi Capela, Leader, Morrow Room Passover Seder
Support Staff
Bobbi Raphael, Coordinator (2012)
Rabbi Judith Hauptman
High Holiday Service Leader
Rabbi Judith Hauptman grew up in Brooklyn, NY, attended a Conservative synagogue, became Orthodox in her teen years at the Yeshivah of Flatbush, but returned to Conservative Judaism in college. She is the first woman ever to receive a PhD in Talmud. Since 1974, she has been teaching Talmud at the Jewish Theological Seminary and training future rabbis. Today she serves as the E. Billi Ivry Professor of Talmud and Rabbinic Culture. In 2003, she followed in her students’ footsteps and was herself ordained as a rabbi at the Academy for Jewish Religion. She currently serves as volunteer rabbi for the Jewish residents of a Catholic nursing home in Lower Manhattan. She lived in Israel for four years. Rabbi Hauptman visited the FSU in 1970 for a week and returned to the FSU in 2010, spending the month of May in Moscow while teaching Talmud at the Russian State University for the Humanities.
Rabbi Judith Hauptman has also been a pioneer in the area of equality of opportunity for women in Jewish life. She was a member of Ezrat Nashim, the group of women that issued in 1972 the first feminist critique of Judaism. Since then she has lectured widely on the subject and written many articles. Her most influential one is entitled, “Women and Prayer: An Attempt to Dispel Some Fallacies,” (JUDAISM, Winter 1993). In it she argues that women have always had an obligation to pray and for that reason can count in the quorum (the minyan) and even lead it in prayer. Her book, Rereading the Rabbis, A Woman’s Voice, has been called one of the founding works of the new Jewish feminism. In this volume she shows that the rabbis of the Talmud, some 1500 years ago, modified many legal institutions, such as marriage, to improve women’s legal and social status. As a result, by the end of the Talmudic period, women were no longer viewed as chattel but as second class citizens(!), a considerable accomplishment. Her other two books trace the evolution of the text of the Mishnah, the Tosefta, and the Gemara.
Rabbi Hauptman has also written for The Jewish Week and other publications. A recent article talks about the challenges facing the Conservative movement. To read Rabbi Hauptman’s article on her experiences teaching Talmud in Moscow in 2010 click here.
You can also read her comments on the Bible portion Va’ethanan at http://jewess.canonist.com/?p=503.
Josh Gorfinkle
Cantorial Soloist & Torah Reader (2007 – present)
A graduate of Brown University, the Ramaz Upper School and the Westchester Day School, Josh Gorfinkle has been serving as Ohel Ayalah’s main cantor since 2007. In his spare time, he loves to play and watch tennis. He attends the US Open every year and even made a pilgrimage to Wimbledon several years ago. He loves the results he gets from working out. Occasionally, he spends a day at the racetrack. He has been to Aqueduct, Belmont, Saratoga and Gulfstream Park. Josh has been leading services frequently, since even before he became a bar mitzvah in 1984. For the past two High Holy Days, he has led services at the Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. In prior years, he led High Holiday services at Brown University, Queensboro Hill Jewish Center, Westchester Jewish Center, Cong. Anshe Sholom, and the United Hebrew Geriatric Center in New Rochelle. He also is an avid reader, especially of biographies. The next book on his reading agenda is about Nixon and Kissinger. He worked as a library clerk for three years at the Jewish Theological Seminary, essentially serving as the library’s receptionist while working at the circulation and reserve desk. He also worked at the Ramaz Upper School Library for two years.
Rabbi Josh Cahan
Rabbi & Cantoral Soloist (2008 – present)
Rabbi Joshua Cahan directs the Jewish Theological Seminary Beit Midrash while working toward a Ph.D. in Talmud. Originally from Washington, DC, he began his path to being a professional Jew as manager of Magevet, the Jewish a cappella singing group at Yale. His first High Holiday sermons were actually given in Russian, in the central Russian city of Perm, as a traveling educator for the JDC. Josh has run the Northwoods Kollel, a summer yeshiva program at Camp Ramah in Wisconsin, since 2000. And his new bencher (book of Shabbat songs and blessings), Shalom Aleikhem, was published in 2009.
Click here to listen to Josh singing HH meodies »
Rabbi Joanna Samuels
Service Leader, Queens
Rabbi Joanna Samuels serves as the Director of Strategic Initiatives at Advancing Women Professionals and the Jewish Community. Prior to assuming this role, Rabbi Samuels served for six years as the rabbi of Congregation Habonim in New York City, where her leadership was instrumental to revitalizing the community. Joanna has taught at Drisha, the JCC of Manhattan, Yeshivat Maharat, The Society for Advancement of Judaism, The Natan Fund, The Samuel Bronfman Foundation, and the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America. She received rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, where she was a Wexner Graduate Fellow.
Rabbi Elianna Yolkut
Service Leader, Manhattan
Rabbi Elianna Yolkut received her rabbinic ordination from the American Jewish University’s Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in 2006 and holds a BA in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies and Sociology from Brandeis University. Following rabbinical school Elianna served as the Assistant Rabbi and Religious School Director of Adat Ari El, a Conservative synagogue in Los Angeles, CA, and as an adjunct faculty member at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies and the Fingerhut School of Education at the American Jewish University. Upon moving to New York in 2010 she worked as the Director of the Center for Jewish Life at the Jewish Community Project Downtown. Currently Elianna is a fellow of Rabbis Without Borders and serves the Jewish community as a freelance rabbi (www.keepingkavannah.blogspot.com) through a portfolio of teaching, speaking and writing as well as guiding individuals and families through lifecycle events.
Stan Alpert
Hazzan Sheni (2004 – present)
Stanley N. Alpert is singing in honor of his father, who was a cantor in Brooklyn with a sweet tenor voice his son’s can never match. For day work, Stan is an environmental lawyer who was Chief of Environmental Litigation at the U.S. Attorney’s Office and now runs The Alpert Firm, a New York City environmental, real estate and commercial litigation, and qui tam false claims practice. He sues companies that have polluted the environment for injuring people personally, or injuring their property, or for contaminating municipal drinking water systems across the United States. Stan also is the author of The Birthday Party: A Memoir of Survival, released by Putnam (Penguin Group) in January 2007. All details at: www.stanleyalpert.com.
Gadi Capela
Leader, Morrow Room Passover Seder (2011)
Gadi is currently a third year rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in Manhattan. He was born and raised in Israel and moved to New York in 1995 after completing a four-year army service in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) as a Lieutenant in a search-and-rescue unit. In 2001 he graduated from Yeshiva University (YU), where he studied Business Management and Jewish Studies. He then worked as a business analyst in the banking and consulting industries for eight years. During that time Gadi also pursued a Master degree in Jewish Philosophy from YU. In 2008 Gadi decided to “take his passion and make it happen” and become a full time rabbinical student. For the past three years Gadi served as a rabbinical assistant at Temple Beth Sholom in Sarasota, Florida, taught Judaism at Camp Ramah in the Poconos, volunteered as a chaplain at the Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. Last year Gadi was a fellow of CLAL’s Rabbis Without Borders (RWB) and for over four years he has been teaching Project Genesis–a Jewish-Catholic monthly class at Our Lady of the Island shrine in Eastport, NY.