Who We Are
The service in Manhattan will be led by Rabbi Judith Hauptman, Talmud Professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Student Cantor Josh Gorfinkle, and Hazzan Sheni Stan Alpert.
The service in Brooklyn will be led by Rabbi Josh Cahan and Ba’alat Tefilah Arielle Rubenstein.
Hanniel Levenson is the Project Co-ordinator of Ohel Ayalah.
Additional participants:
Patricia Rudden, Acting Cantor for Torah Service (2004, 2005)
Zack Berger, Torah Reader (2004)
Abraham Menashe, Torah Reader (2005)
Elinor Nauen, Shofar Blower (2004, 2007)
Professor Hasia Diner, New York University, lecturer on Rosh Hashanah (2004, 2005)
Ben Rosner, Student Cantor (2006)
Professor Alfred Ivry, New York University, lecturer on Rosh Hashanah (2006)
Arielle Rubenstein
Arielle Rubenstein hails from Houston, where she learned to love Jewish music from her synagogue’s Hazzan, Steven Berke. She is a lifelong choral singer, and has sung with the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum and the Zamir Chorale. In college, she was a student leader of the Conservative Minyan, where she participated in High Holiday services for several years. Last year she led High Holiday services at the University of North Carolina Hillel. Arielle graduated from Harvard with a B.A. in Social Studies in 2007, and currently works as a paralegal in Manhattan.
Click here to listen to Arielle singing HH meodies »
Josh Cahan
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, will be published this Winter.
Click here to listen to Josh singing HH meodies »
Josh Gorfinkle, Student Cantor and Torah Reader (2007, 2008)
A graduate of Brown University, the Ramaz Upper School and the Westchester Day School, Josh Gorfinkle is currently enrolled in the H. L. Miller Cantorial School at the Jewish Theological Seminary. 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.
Stan Alpert, Hazzan Sheni (2004-2008)
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.
Patricia Rudden, Acting Cantor for Torah Service (2004, 2005)
Patricia Rudden has been singing and leading services for a number of congregations and minyans in New York City and vicinity. She is currently the regular service leader, with Rabbi Judith Hauptman, at the Cabrini Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation. She has sung in synagogue choirs and with the Zamir Chorale, and at Chanukah parties and community Seders of the Jewish Faculty and Staff Association of New York City College of Technology, where she is Associate Professor of English.
Julia Andelman, Seder Leader (2006)
Julia Andelman received her rabbinical ordination in May 2006 from the Jewish Theological Seminary, where she is also pursuing an M.A. in Talmud. She served as interim spiritual leader of Beth Jacob Synagogue in Hamilton, Ontario. She is now the rabbi of Cong. Sha’arei Tzedek on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Prior to her rabbinical studies, Julia received a B.A. in Visual Arts from Harvard, where she served on the Harvard Hillel Steering Committee and sang with the nationally acclaimed Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum, a mixed choir specializing in Renaissance and early music. She then spent three years engaged in intensive text study at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem. Julia is a popular shelichat tzibur (prayer leader) in the New York area, and also teaches, consults, and travels as a scholar-in-residence in the area of Jewish prayer. She is especially known for her work with Kehilat Hadar on the Upper West Side, for whom she produced Pri Eitz Hadar, a CD of nineteen eclectic prayer melodies from different Jewish musical traditions. She is currently working on her second CD, a compilation of Hebrew lullabies that will serve as a companion to a forthcoming children’s book based on the Bedtime Shema. Julia also composes melodies for Jewish liturgical and biblical texts.
Zack Berger, Torah Reader (2004)
Zackary Sholem Berger is a member of Town and Village Synagogue, but considers himself a post-denominational Jew. He is a contributor to Forverts (the Yiddish Forward) and Forward, and publishes poetry and essays in a number of journals in both English and Yiddish. He also maintains a blog, zackarysholemberger.blogspot.com. He and his wife, Celeste Sollod, have recently founded Twenty-Fourth Street Books, a publishing house specializing in Yiddish-language translations of English-language children’s books. Their first book, Di Kats der Payats (The Cat in the Hat in Yiddish),is available at www.yiddishcat.com. In his other life, Zack is a student in the MD-PhD program at New York University. Zack and Celeste live with their daughter, Blanca, and their son, Micah, in Manhattan.
Abraham Menashe, Torah Reader (2005)
Abraham Menashe is a free-lance photographer whose essays and fine-art work have graced the pages of numerous publications, including Newsweek, Scientific American, The New York Times, and Time-Life Books. Abraham is committed to images that affirm life, provide refuge, and offer healing. His humanistic photography is acclaimed for its poetic beauty and compassion. Born in Egypt in 1951, Abraham Menashe now lives in New York City. His books include Inner Grace (Knopf, 1979), about AmericaÂ’s multi-handicapped population, published in conjunction with a show at the Witkin Gallery, New York City, and The Face of Prayer (Knopf, 1980), images made around the world on the nature of reverence, published in conjunction with a show at the International Center of Photography, New York City. Abraham Menashe’s photographs are in several museum collections, including New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Jewish Museum, New York City. Commissioned work includes a permanent installation at the Church Center of the United Nations. To see more of his work, visit www.humanistic-photography.com Abraham will be reciting the first day Rosh Hashanah Torah reading (Genesis 21:1-34) and Maftir (Numbers 29:1-6) using the Spanish-Moroccan Sephardic cantillation.
Elinor Nauen, Shofar Blower (2004, 2007)
Elinor Nauen comes from a family of professional musicians but has put aside the violin to concentrate on blowing the shofar. From a Reform congregation in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, last year she celebrated her adult bat mitzvah at Town and Village, where she attends daily minyan and is librarian of the Grayson Library. She has worked as an editor at Judaica Press, on the Books of the Bible series. She has published a number of books, including anthologies of women writers on cars and baseball and volumes of her own poetry. Her poetry and prose has been published in many literary magazines and anthologies. She makes her living as a freelance writer and editor, editing books by Senator George Mitchell, Paul Krassner and others, and for such publications as Self, AARP: The Magazine, Newsweek and Organic Style, on subjects that include health, automobiles, media issues and sports. She has taught writing workshops, guest-lectured and/or read at Washington State University, the University of South Dakota, Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, Hofstra University, the University of Tulsa, the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY, and the Sports Literature Association (keynote speaker), as well as many high, middle and elementary schools; she was the visiting poet at Pingry School in Martinsville, NJ, for several years. She is on the board of directors of the Poetry Project and the editorial advisory board of Southern Illinois University Presss Writing Baseball series.
Hanniel Levenson
Born in Haifa, Israel, reared in New York City, Hanniel Levenson is the project coordinator for Ohel Ayalah. Hanniel majored in Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University and was awarded a Master of Science degree in environmental policy at Bard College. A self-described post-denominational Jew, Hanniel sees a strong connection between the environment and Judaism and plans to pursue this avenue in his Rabbinical studies at The Academy for Jewish Religion. Hanniel is a Research Associate of Integrative Medicine at the Beth Israel Continuum Center for Health and Healing. He passionately promotes green healthcare environments and patient-centered care, believing them to be crucial components to patient recovery. Hanniel teaches philosophy, prayer, and religion to various and eclectic groups, including a small prayer group in the Rockaways, Queens and a learner’s group at a synagogue in Manhattan. He is also a painter, a competitive gymnast, who has competed on the national level, as well as a recently Registered Yoga Teacher.