MAKE Hanukkah

Deena Aranoff is assistant professor of medieval Jewish studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif. Her interests include rabbinic literature, medieval patterns of Jewish thought and the broader question of continuity and change in Jewish history. Deena is also a community educator and teaches Bible, rabbinics, and Jewish mysticism in a variety of adult education programs. Deena is also a recently certified yoga instructor and teaches yoga in San Francisco.

Yosef Rosen is an historian and teacher of Jewish creativity. His classes weave together the imaginative and social dimensions of Jewish creative genres—Kabbalah, Talmud, philosophy, and poetry—and invite students to discover their own genres of intellectual creativity. He is currently a Jewish Studies teacher at JCHS of the Bay. He has a Ph.D. in Jewish Studies from UC Berkeley, where he completed a dissertation on representations of spiritual community in the Zohar. Before moving to the Bay seven years ago, Yosef spent many years in traditional and innovative yeshivot in both Israel and America. In his spare time he wanders the woodlands of Northern California and celebrates the hillsides of the Bay on his bike.

Peretz Wolf-Prusan is the Chief Program Officer and a Senior Educator at Lehrhaus Judaica. From 1975 to 1985 he was actively involved in informal education (UAHC Camp Swig) and in the creation of Jewish scribal art. From 1985 to 1990 he attended the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, receiving his MAHL and Rabbinic Ordination. From 1990 to 2010 he served Congregation Emanu-El of San Francisco as Rabbi and Educator, and in 2002, he was awarded the Covenant Award as “An Exceptional Jewish Educator who has had a significant impact on others, in recognition of his outstanding contributions to the transmission of Jewish knowledge, values, and identity.” At Lehrhaus since 2010, he is engaged in community education for the Bay Area, focusing on conferences, retreats, tours, the Bay Area Community Talmud Circle, and Lehrhaus Philosophy Circle, and adjunct faculty for the JFCS Holocaust Center.

Tamar is an educator, organizer, and community worker who lives in the East Bay. She spent over a decade directing Jewish Service Learning programs at Memizrach Shemesh, a beit midrash (study center) for social change inspired by the commentaries and writings of Mizrachi and Sephardic Jews, based in Jerusalem. She graduated from the Joint Program at Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and received a MSW from Wurzweiler School of Social Work at Yeshiva University in New York. She has two daughters, Lilah and Amina, and is married to Asher. In her spare time,Tamar translates Sephardic Rabbinic texts to expose English speaking audiences to their inspiring message of inclusion and justice.