The Tikvah Fellowship
Fellows

Fellows

This page lists the bios of the 2012-2013 Tikvah Fellowship class. Click here to view the biographies of the 2011-2012 Tikvah Fellowship class.

Jamie Black

Jamie Black is from London, UK. He graduated from the University of Nottingham with a first-class degree in politics before earning an MPhil in management at Cambridge. Thereafter he worked for a parliamentary committee specializing in taxation, where he led a research project on the reform of the UK’s tax-administration system. He takes a keen interest in the affairs of Anglo-Jewry and has acted in an advisory capacity to the Forum for Jewish Leadership. Previously, he worked for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, DC and the British Conservative party. Politics aside, he is interested in golf and ice hockey.

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Ben Elton

Ben Elton studied history at Cambridge, where he graduated with a double first with distinction before going on to earn a PhD from the University of London in Jewish history (2007) and to be elected a fellow of the Royal Historical Society (2010). He is the author of Britain’s Chief Rabbis and the Religious Character of Anglo-Jewry 1880-1970. From 2004 to 2009 he worked in the British civil service, including as private secretary to the Lord Chancellor and as an assistant director of the Judicial Appointments Commission. He is currently a visiting scholar in the department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at NYU and is studying for semikha at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah.

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Tova Ganzel

Tova Ganzel received her doctoral degree in Bible from Bar-Ilan University in 2005 and is a certified halakhic counselor on family purity. She divides her time between serving as assistant director of the Midrasha for Women at Bar-Ilan and teaching Bible at Bar-Ilan and Herzog College. As a halakhic adviser, she has participated in the process of institutionalizing halakhic decision-making by women. In Bible studies, her main areas are the prophetic books and nineteenth-century biblical criticism. More recently, she has translated her practical experience as a halakhic counselor into research on the issue of women and halakha.

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Jason Guberman

Jason Guberman earned a bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from Sacred Heart University in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he was elected class president, was awarded fellowships with the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and published essays in various periodicals. He now serves as the founding executive director of Digital Heritage Mapping, a non-profit enterprise, and coordinator of its flagship initiative, Diarna, an online geo-museum dedicated to preserving and providing access to the sites and memories of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish life. He has written for AJS Perspectives, Sh’ma, and My Jewish Learning, and was recently named to the Council of Young Jewish Presidents.

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Avnet Kleiner

Avnet Kleiner, who has a BA magna cum laude from Ben-Gurion University, is the co-founder of the “What IsRael” project, which sends Israeli student delegations to campuses across the globe to promote dialogue and combat the assault on Israel’s legitimacy. He has also acted as an official representative of Israel for the Jewish Agency in New York, where he coordinated summer activities for Jewish youth. Currently, he is an MA student in Diplomatic Studies at Tel-Aviv University while serving as an analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) and a fellow in the Young Leadership Program at the Jewish Statesmanship Center.

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Ari Lamm

Ari Lamm graduated from Yeshiva College summa cum laude in both history and Jewish studies, having earned a research scholarship in support of his work fusing ancient Jewish studies with Old Iranian studies. He subsequently won a Fulbright to complete his MA in Hebrew & Jewish studies at University College London before commencing rabbinical studies at Yeshiva, where he is now a member of the Straus Semikha seminar on Jewish Ideas & American Democracy. A well-traveled lecturer, he will be serving next year as the rabbinic intern at the Jewish Center in New York.

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Dov Lerner

Dov Lerner, born and raised in a London suburb, has lived in New York for almost four years. After three years in Israel at Yeshivat Har Etzion, he went on to complete a degree in English literature at Yeshiva University in New York while contributing pieces to publications sponsored by the UK United Synagogue. This past year, Dov has served as a rabbinic intern at the Lincoln Square Synagogue and a class assistant in YU’s Beit Midrash program. Now entering his final year of YU’s semikha program simultaneously with the Tikvah Fellowship, Dov is also hoping to do graduate study in the field of religion and literature.

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Yakov Meir

Yakov Meir, who lives in Jerusalem with his wife and child, studied at Yeshivat Siakh in Efrat and at the Hebrew University, where he received a BA in Talmud and an MA in Jewish studies. He has taught Talmud and Zohar in several different settings and contributes a weekly Torah column to Haaretz and a weekly Talmud commentary to Makor Rishon. His first novel, Gam Tzipor (“The Sparrow, Too”), was recently published by Hakibbutz Hameuhad.

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Margaret Moslander

Margaret Moslander graduated summa cum laude from Middlebury College in 2011 with a major in political science and a minor in French. Her primary interests lie in political philosophy, particularly the relationship between reason and revelation, and constitutional law. Last summer, she participated in the Hertog Political Studies Program in Washington DC, and returned this summer to serve as a preceptor. Born and raised in New York City, she is excited to be returning to her hometown and hoping to watch the NY Yankees win their 28th World Series championship.

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Robert W. Nicholson

Robert W. Nicholson, born in Los Angeles and raised in upstate New York, is a former U.S. Marine who recently earned both a JD and an MA in history from Syracuse University.  He has held a variety of legal and academic positions and has published articles in, among other places, the Syracuse Journal of International Law & Commerce and the Journal of Jewish Identities.  His research focuses primarily on the role of law in Israel and the wider Middle East, and he plans to develop a high-quality website to track and analyze important developments in Israeli jurisprudence. He is also very interested in the development of relations between Christians and Jews.

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Alex Ozar

Alex Ozar was born and raised in St. Louis and, after two years at Yeshivat Kerem b’Yavneh in Israel, attended Yeshiva College in New York, where he majored in philosophy and helped run Kol Hamevaser, a YU magazine of Jewish thought. Having now earned an MA in Jewish philosophy at YU, he hopes to complete the requirements for semikha soon. Last year, he served as a junior fellow at First Things magazine. Through his own writing, he aspires to contribute to the enterprise of Jewish thought; an example of his work is “The Limits of Orthodox Autonomy: Evaluating Rabbi David Hartman’s Moral-Theological Enterprise” in the Winter 2012 issue of Tradition. 

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Ohad Reifen

Ohad Reifen, who lives in Jerusalem, has been working for the past seven years in the budget department of Israel’s Ministry of Finance, where he has been involved in a variety of fields including trade and industry, tourism, social security, welfare, immigrant absorption, and strategic planning and oversight. A native of Rehovot, he completed his high-school education in Hong Kong. Following his service in the IDF, he studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where he completed a dual BA in economics and the Amirim honors program. He subsequently received an MA in the politics of the world economy at the London School of Economics.

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Masha Rifkin

Masha Rifkin graduated from Cornell University where she first acquired a taste and a passion for journalism. While studying at Tel Aviv University during her junior year, she began to work closely with the city of Sderot, initiating an international effort to bring relief and awareness to that besieged city and its people; today, that effort has resulted in an after-school program and an annual summer camp for Sderot’s children. After some post-BA time in the financial sector, she decided to return to journalism, most recently serving as the managing editor of Joint Media News Service, an international Jewish wire service based in Boston. 

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Lauren Salz

Lauren Salz, recently at the management consulting firm of McKinsey & Company, is a graduate of Barnard College, where she studied economics, served as president of Columbia College Republicans, opinion columnist for the Daily Spectator, and flautist in the Columbia University Orchestra.  She spent her junior year reading Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at St. Peter’s College, Oxford, where she also rowed for the college, competed with the university’s triathlon club, and was director of education of the Oxford Jewish Society. Previously she worked as a summer intern at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. and as a farmer in Estonia.  

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Benjamin Schvarcz

Benjamin Schvarcz was raised in France and in Israel in ultra-Orthodox communities. He recently completed an MA in political science at Hebrew University where he worked as a teaching assistant. Benjamin also has a BA in political science and public communication from Bar-Ilan University. His research interests are focused on Aristotelian and Talmudic rhetoric and private property in the Talmud. Benjamin served as a parliamentary assistant and spokesman for MK Michael Eitan (Likud). At Tikvah, Benjamin will be researching the dialogue between the work of John Locke and modern Jewish Thought. He is married and the father of two children.

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Eran Schwartz

Eran Schwartz completed his BA with honors at Haifa University and is currently pursuing a dual MA in communications and political science at Haifa University and the Institut d’Études Politiques in Paris. A major in the IDF, he is a pilot and commander and has served as an instructor in the IAF Flight Academy. Eran initiated various volunteer programs serving underprivileged Israeli youth and a public-diplomacy (hasbara) program in collaboration with the Israeli embassy in Paris.  He hopes to take an active role in shaping Israel’s future political landscape, with a special interest in education. He loves reading, writing, surfing, running, and basketball. 

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Ethan Schwartz

Ethan Schwartz recently received his BA, Phi Beta Kappa, from the College of the University of Chicago, where he double-majored in philosophy and Jewish studies. His interests include literary approaches to the Hebrew Bible, the philosophical issues at stake in Jewish textual interpretation, and the roles of memory and narrative in Judaism. In college, he served as co-founder and editor-in-chief of Makom, Chicago’s undergraduate journal of Jewish thought. In 2011 he was a summer fellow at Yeshivat Hadar in New York. He hopes to pursue graduate study in Jewish philosophy.

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Alexander Kazam Sherbany

Alexander Kazam Sherbany graduated summa cum laude in government from Harvard College. He was managing editor of the Harvard Political Review, managing editor of the Harvard Undergraduate Leadership Magazine, and a photographer for the Crimson newspaper. He has worked as a research assistant at United against Nuclear Iran and as an intern in Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office in New York. He spent the last year working and studying in Paris, where he was active in the Union des Étudiants Juifs de France.

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Yoav Sorek

Yoav Sorek, forty-two, married and the father of seven children, lives in Ofra. A descendant of a rabbinic family, and a devoted yeshiva student, he also has an MA in Jewish history. In recent years, he has worked mainly in the fields of editing and journalism, publishing numerous articles on political and religious issues and creating and editing the Shabbat supplement of Makor Rishon, now a major platform for debates about modern Judaism, philosophy, Zionism, art, and culture. He is searching for ways to revive the talmudic and halakhic tradition as a relevant source of values and practice for an Israeli society that has largely adopted secularism.

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Jeremy Stern

Jeremy Stern graduated from Kenyon College in 2011 with a BA in political science and Russian. He spent his junior year studying at St. Petersburg State University in Russia and was a student in the 2011 Hertog Political Studies Program in Washington, DC. During the past year, he has served as the assistant director of the Emergency Committee for Israel, a pro-Israel advocacy organization in Washington. In this life, he hopes to work in and write about politics; in the next life, to play for the Los Angeles Lakers.

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Hinda Young

Hinda Young graduated with honors in classics from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She also studied at the American University of Rome and participated in an archaeological excavation of Etruscan ruins in Orvieto, Italy.  While at McGill, she was involved in the student synagogue, served as the youth director of Congregation Shaar Hashomayim, took part in translating and staging student performances of Greek tragedy, and was an editor of McGill’s journal of classical studies.  Having spent the past two summers in New York at the CUNY Greek Institute and at Drisha, she looks forward to returning to the city.

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Jonathan Ziring

Jonathan Ziring is a graduate of the honors program at Yeshiva College with a BA in philosophy and Jewish studies.  He is now pursuing an MA in Jewish philosophy and rabbinical ordination at YU.  He has taught classes and lectured at many campuses, schools, and synagogues, most recently at the Columbia University Hillel.  He has been a senior fellow at the Summer Beit Midrash of the Center for Modern Torah Leadership, a fellow in the Cardozo Center for Jewish Law, and a fellow in the Straus Center for Jewish Ideas and Western Thought.

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