Presenters International and local presenters join the Limmud Festival to offer a diverse and engaging event. From self deprecating comedy to Middle East analysis by a terrorism expert. Subscribe to our e-newsletter and we will keep you up to date with all the local and international presenters for this year's festival.

International Presenters

	Shlomo Brown Rav Brown is a graduate of the Hesder Yeshiva Har Etzion and received semicha from the Chief Rabbinate. He is also a graduate of The Yaakov Herzog Teachers' College. Rav Brown has been working in Midreshet Lindenbaum since 1986 and is currently the Head of School. In 1994 he went on educational shlichut to Toronto where he was principal of the Ulpana High School for four years. He has been leading groups to Poland for almost twenty years. View sessions
	Jeremy Dauber Jeremy Dauber is the Atran Associate Professor of Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture, and Director of Columbia's Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies. His first book, Antonio's Devils: Writers of the Jewish Enlightenment and the Birth of Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literature, was published in 2004 by Stanford University Press; in 2006, he and Joel Berkowitz published an anthology of their translations of landmark Yiddish plays; Yale University Press plans to publish his second monograph, In the Demon's Bedroom: Yiddish Literature and the Early Modern, next year. He is the co-editor of Prooftexts: A Journal of Jewish Literature, a leading journal in the field. Dauber's research interests include older Yiddish literature, the literature of the Jewish Enlightenment, and Yiddish theatre, and he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on Yiddish literature, as well as courses on humour in Jewish literature and American Jewish literature. He regularly lectures on topics related to Jewish literature, history, and popular culture. View sessions
	Anat Hoffman Anat Hoffman became Executive Director of the Israel Religious Action Center in 2002. Previously, Ms Hoffman served as a Jerusalem City Council woman for 14 years, carving out a niche for herself as an untiring warrior for justice and equality. She has dedicated her adult life to the Jewish principle of tikkun olam, which literally means repairing the world. It is this commitment to social action and justice that has formed her career. Anat was a founding member of Women of the Wall, and she served on the Boards of the Israel Women's Network, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, and many other Israeli organisations for social change. View sessions
	Tzipi Hotovely Tzipi Hotovely is Israel's youngest Member of Knesset and head of the Committee on the Status of Women. Now a doctoral candidate in law, Tzipi qualified as a lawyer in 2003. During her studies she was active in the World Union of Jewish Students (WUJS) and was the editor of Bar-Ilan's Journal of Law. In 2006, she started writing opinion pieces on current political issues for Ma’ariv, and since 2007 has had a regular column in the Judaism section of NRG. MK Hotovely was among the most vocal critics of the Olmert government following the 2006 Second Lebanon War. Since taking her oath as a Member of the 18th Knesset, MK Hotovely has continued to proudly represent a fervent and unapologetic Zionist platform, firmly based on Jewish principles and values. View sessions
	Efraim Inbar Educated at the Hebrew University (BA in Political Science and English Literature) and at the University of Chicago (MA and PhD in Political Science), Efraim Inbar is a Professor in Political Studies at Bar-Ilan University and the Director of its Begin-Sadat (BESA) Center for Strategic Studies. He served as visiting professor at Georgetown University (1991-92) and the Johns Hopkins University (2003), visiting scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars (1996), and visiting Fellow at the (London) International Institute for Strategic Studies (2000), and was the recipient of the Onassis Fellowship (2003). His area of specialisation is Middle Eastern strategic issues with a special interest in the politics and strategy of Israeli national security. He has written over 60 articles in professional journals, edited seven collections of articles and authored five books. His latest is Israel’s National Security: Issues and Challenges since the Yom Kippur War (2008). View sessions
	Avi Jorisch Avi Jorisch is the founder of the Red Cell Intelligence Group, a consulting and training firm that specialises in national security issues relating to terrorism, illicit finance and radical Islam. In addition, he is a Senior Fellow and head of the Center for Combating Threat Finance at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and an Adjunct Scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Mr Jorisch is the author of Tainted Money: Winning the War on Money Laundering and Terrorism Finance? He holds a bachelor's degree in history from Binghamton University and a master's degree in Islamic history from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Mr Jorisch has travelled extensively in the Middle East and has written at length about illicit finance, radical Islam and counter-terrorism. View sessions
	Einat Kapach Einat Kapach is a screenwriter and director who lives and creates in her native Jerusalem. A graduate of the Ma'aleh Film School with an MA from the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem, Einat lectures on film and Jewish identity in different communities in Israel and abroad including small Jewish communities in the US and Africa. She directed the award-winning film Jephtah's Daughter which played at numerous festivals around the world. She was a diarist in the film Peace Diaries which details the lives of Israelis and Palestinians over a six month period. Einat is frequently invited to lecture at various foundations and was a judge at the 2009 Jerusalem Film Festival. She recently directed the documentary film Two Legacies and her feature script At the End of a Long Day won the Minister of Education's award for Artists in the field of Jewish Culture. View sessions
	Shira Kline Shira Kline, aka ShirLaLa is a celebrated New York based performer and music educator. Travelling across the country and internationally with her kiddie-rock band, Shira delivers a dynamic, interactive program of joy and spirit, story and song. As a founding company member of Storahtelling, Shira has worked for over a decade with a diverse array of Jewish communities to enliven rituals, holiday celebrations, and love for Jewish life and prayer. Her three "outrageously hip Jewish kiddie rock" albums found at ShirLaLa.com have sold over 20,000 copies. Shira's newest recording project Earth Worm Disco celebrates eco-music for kids. Weaving together creativity, stories and games, Earth Worm Disco delivers a powerful message, nourishing the brain, body and heart.
	Daniel Landes Daniel Landes studied with Rabbis Zvi Yehudah Kook, Aryeh Levine and Avraham Shairo at the Mercaz HaRav Yeshivah in Jerusalem. He was given semicha by his mentor, the Rav – Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Landes was a founding faculty member at Yeshiva University of Los Angeles and of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and was rabbi of the famed Bnai David-Judaea Congregation. He was a dayan on the Orthodox Beit Din (Court). He is Director and Rosh HaYeshiva of the Pardes Institute of Jerusalem, teaching the Jerusalem Talmud and Jewish thought. He has edited several books on social ethics and has been the Jewish Law Commentator for My People’s Prayerbook, a 10-volume work. Rabbi Landes has been described as a "remarkable teacher who weaves the insights of his students together through a group process, in order to discover fascinating new meanings in age-old texts". View sessions
	Sheryl Robbin Sheryl Robbin is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Michigan and has graduate degrees in social work and in human development from the University of Chicago, as well as in Creative Writing from Bar Ilan University. She is also a trained bibliotherapist. In Los Angeles she worked in the field of child abuse and was rebbitzen of the Bnai David-Judaea Congregation. Since Aliya, Sheryl has worked with the elderly with dementia through Melabev, using bibliotherapy with them as well as with their families. She has led writing workshops for Pardes' spirituality seminars. She has published articles on the weekly parsha for the Jerusalem Report and in addition has written for Tikkun, Koleich (the Israel Religious Feminist Alliance) and has an upcoming piece in the JOFA (Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance) Journal. She is working on a novel. View sessions
	Amichai Lau Lavie Amichai Lau-Lavie is the Founder and Executive Director of Storahtelling, Inc. An Israeli-born teacher of Judaic Literature and performance artist, he is described as "one of the most interesting thinkers in the Jewish world" by the NY Jewish Week, "iconoclastic mystic" by Time OUT NY, and "a Judaic Pied Piper who spins gold out of the inherent drama of biblical legends and scripture" by the Denver Westword. Amichai studied at various yeshivot, including the Shalom Hartman Institute and the Elul Center in Jerusalem. Between 1992 and 1996 he directed the summer programs at Melitz: the Jewish Zionist Centers in Jerusalem, focusing on the integration of Jewish education via the arts. His theatrical experience as a writer and performer includes the Theatre Company Jerusalem, The Acco Theatre Group in Israel and the Avodah Dance Ensemble in the U.S. Between 1997-2000 he served as Artist-in-Residence at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in New York City. Amichai is a Jeruslalem Fellow at the Mandel Leadership Institute in Israel (2008-2009) and is a consultant to the Reboot Network, a member of the Synagogue 3000 Leadership Network, serves on the Advisory Council for the Six Points Fellowship, the Advisory Board for faithhouse manhattan, and the Board of Directors of Zeek Magazine. View sessions
	Aaron Rosen Dr Aaron Rosen is a Research Fellow in Jewish History and Culture at Oxford University, and has previously been a post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University after earning his PhD from Cambridge University. Dr Rosen writes and teaches on a range of topics related to modern art and Jewish thought. His first book, Imagining Jewish Art (Oxford: Legenda, 2009), looked at how modern Jewish painters have made sense of the largely Christian heritage of Western art. Dr Rosen is currently at work on a second book entitled The Art of Interfaith Dialogue, which will investigate parallels between modern Jewish, Christian, and Muslim artists. View sessions
	Raymond Scheindlin Raymond Scheindlin is Professor of Medieval Hebrew Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. Born in Philadelphia, he received his BA from the University of Pennsylvania, his master’s degree and rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and his PhD in Arabic Language and Literature from Columbia University (1971). He has published companion volumes on the poetry of the Hebrew Golden Age, entitled Wine, Women, and Death: Medieval Hebrew Poems on the Good Life and The Gazelle: Medieval Hebrew Poems on God, Israel, and the Soul. He published a verse translation of the Book of Job in 1998. His Short History of the Jewish People also appeared in 1998. His most recent book is Song of a Distant Dove: Pilgrimage Poems by Judah Halevi (Oxford Univerity Press, 2007). Scheindlin has been a Guggenheim fellow and a Cullman fellow at the New York Public Library. In 2004 he received the Jewish Cultural Achievement Award of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. View sessions