Presenters - R

Robert works in the field of carbon trading and offsetting. He was part of the team that launched the world's first carbon trading exchange and heads up the UK's leading carbon offsetting charity. His prior career was in religious education including Jewish Continuity, Centre for Jewish Learning and Leadership (CLAL) and Auburn Theological Seminary.

Sessions:

• Moses the Hero: A Close Reading of Jewish Mythology
• Would Isaiah approve of emissions trading?

Organisation: Limmud NY
Website: http://www.limmudny.org

Karen is the founding president of Limmud NY, which will hold its annual conference January 15-18. An avid Limmudnik, Karen is co-chairing this year’s chavruta project. She serves on the Limmud International team, and has advised Limmud teams globally. Professionally, she heads The Research Consultancy, specializing in online market research.

Sessions:

• Taking Limmud Back Home - Interactions with the Wider Community

Website: http://www.facebook.com/adam.rattner

Adam has been an advertising strategist for ten years with clients including lastminute.com, Waitrose and the Home Office. Now employed as an in-house specialist at Coca-Cola, he is this year's Marketing Chair for Conference. He plays a mean hand of Texas Hold'em and is up for a game.

Sessions:

• Clobyosh - learn a Jewish card game

Organisation: Faith in Leadership
Website: http://www.faithinleadership.org/

Krish started and works for Faith in Leadership, Britain’s main leadership development programme for outstanding young people from the major faith traditions. He is a Senior Fellow of the James MacGregor Burns Academy of Leadership at the University of Maryland and he read law at Trinity Hall, Cambridge and Sheffield University.

Sessions:

• Faith in Leadership

Alan Reich has a professional background in film and television producing. He has been involved with Israeli films for 20 years - from his first job as a projectionist at the Jerusalem Cinematheque to Oscar-winning One Day In September.

Sessions:

• Tel Aviv at 100 - Film Retrospective (1 of 3)
• Tel Aviv at 100 - Film Retrospective (2 of 3)
• Tel Aviv at 100 - Film Retrospective (3 of 3)

Organisation: Moishe House London
Website: http://www.rachelrosereid.com/

RRR is a storyteller and founder resident of the grassroots Jewish Community Moishe House, London.She has told tales at the Barbican, Soho Theatre, Latitude Festival, Burning Man Festival and for the BBC. "...has the audience hanging on her every word" The Times, "a glimpse of magic" The Guardian.

Sessions:

• Samson: Unbound Strength and Broken Dreams (1 of 2)
• Samson: Unbound Strength and Broken Dreams (2 of 2)
• Magic Carpet Ride

Organisation: RenéCassin
Website: http://renecassin.org/

Daniel read theology at Cambridge before training to become a doctor. He has a PhD in Neuroscience and Genetics from Oxford and serves as education chair of the Jewish Human Rights organisation RenéCassin.

Sessions:

• After Darwin: Reimagining the Sacred (1 of 3)
• Gaza, Goldstone, and the Ethics of War
• After Darwin: Reimagining the Sacred (2 of 3)
• After Darwin: Reimagining the Sacred (3 of 3)
• Chavruta (4 of 4)
• The Faith of a Heretic: The Tragedy of Elisha ben Abuyah

David met his wife Samantha at Limmud Conference. Now a father to Joshua and Rachel, he spends his rapidly declining spare time following Arsenal, planning skiing trips and playing bridge.

Sessions:

• The Yekkes' contribution to Jewish life

Organisation: YEDID - The Association for Community Empowerment
Website: http://www.yedid.org.il/

An American-Israeli, Sari founded/directed SHATIL (NIF subsidiary) developing thousands of NGOs (1984-1997). In 1997 she founded YEDID,(the Association for Community Empowerment) operating Citizen’s Rights/ Law Centers and empowering citizens to break the cycle of poverty. Awards: 2008 Globes-Schwab Award for Social Entrepreneurship; 2006 Jewish Women International’s Woman of Note; 2005 Globes magazine Israel’s 50 most influential women.

Sessions:

• Give Israel a Helping Hand, Rather Than a Handout
• Passionate about Social and Economic Justice? Put Your Cause on the National Agenda

Organisation: Kabbalah of the Heart
Website: http://www.kabbalahoftheheart.com/

Melinda Ribner is internationally known for her pioneering work in Jewish meditation and meditative kabbalah. She is a certified Jewish spiritual healer and a licensed psychotherapist who uses meditation and kabbalah as part of treatment. She is the author of New Age Judaism, Kabbalah Month by Month and Everyday Kabbalah.

Sessions:

• Kabbalah of Intimacy: kabbalah of the Masculine and Feminine
• Conversations with Mother Sarah
• Who Am I really? Living with Authenticity
• Kabbalah of Healing
• Guided Jewish Meditation
• The Ecstasy of Meditative Kabbalah
• Bringing Heaven Down to Earth: Spirituality Confronts Reality

Organisation: Liberal Judaism
Website: http://www.liberaljudaism.org/

Danny Rich is the chief executive of Liberal Judaism. The former rabbi to Kingston Liberal Synagogue, he is a President of the Council of Christians and Jews, British representative of Rabbis for Human Rights, magistrate, prison andhospital chaplain and has completed post-graduate studies in criminology and Jewish-Muslim relations.

Sessions:

• How tainted was the Golden Age of Spain?
• The life and thought of Rabbi Dr Israel Mattuck
• The Impact of the JFS Case
• Are Israeli policies entrenching anti-semitism worldwide?
• After Question Time: The BNP, The Election and Us

Albert Ringer is the Rabbi of the reform community of Rotterdam, Netherlands and Chaplain, both in the Dutch army and in a large psychiatric hospital. He studied architectural history and has published on synagogue architecture.

Sessions:

• The Wall Paintings of Dura Europos
• Suffering

Organisation: JTrails.org.uk
Website: http://jtrails.org.uk/

Marcus Roberts is the founder and director of JTrails.org.uk (supported by English Heritage). Starting with Oxford in 1989, he has written and led many Jewish heritage trails. He lectures and writes in this field and is a member of the council of the Jewish Historical Society of England.

Sessions:

• A Virtual Heritage Tour of the New Jewish Brighton-and-Hove ‘JTrail’
• The JTrails ‘Time Team’ Exploration of the Jewish Archaeology and Heritage of Medieval Northampton

Organisation: Tzedek
Website: http://www.tzedek.org.uk/

Vikki Rose completed a degree in Youth and Community Studies and then worked for Maccabi GB as National Leadership Manager. Vikki is currently working for Tzedek as Education Projects Director.

Sessions:

• Recycle & Re-use: Handicrafts with Tzedek

Gilla Rosen is director of Yakar, founded by her late husband, Rabbi Mickey Rosen. She teaches Talmud and Midrash at Yakar Jerusalem and Women in Halakha at Nishmat and works as a yoezet halakha. Originally American, she lived in England for 17 years and participated in the first (mad) Limmud gatherings. She has six wonderful children.

Sessions:

• Parshat Vayigash: Meeting, Motion and Meditation
• Midrash and the Unconscious: Midrash and Other Radical Readings
• Limmud Town Hall: 2020 Vision – What Next for the Jewish People?
• Did the Angels Really Appear to Abraham? Midrash and Other Radical Readings
• "God spoke once, I heard two (things)": Midrash and Other Radical Readings
• Who Was Esther? Or: You Are What You Pray

Organisation: Nefesh B'Nefesh
Website: http://www.nbn.org.il/

Marc Rosenberg is project manager for overseas programming at Nefesh B'Nefesh – an organization revitalizing aliyah from the UK and North America. He worked for several years with the Federation of Zionist Youth's year course, on their faculty and as an informal educator. Marc is currently pursuing a PhD in literature at Bar-Ilan University.

Sessions:

• Aliyah 2009: time to move on?
• Aliyah: The Energy or Drain of Diaspora Communities?
• Discovering Abraham’s Origins
• Herzl's Israel - A Jewish State or just a State for Jews?

Philip Rosenberg is the interfaith officer at the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Before this role, he served as director of MuJewz, a Muslim-Jewish dialogue group at Oxford University. He is a graduate of the Faith in Leadership programme, which seeks to identify potential change-makers in the faith communities.

Sessions:

• Interfaith Tour in Coventry
• Polemical Texts in Christian-Jewish Relations: Their Context, Evolution and Contemporary Understanding

Organisation: Kingston, Surbiton & District Synagogue

Michael Rosenfeld originates from America, but he spent 8 years in Israel. He has a BA in history and Hebrew from the University of Wisconsin. He received semichah from Yeshivat Ha’Mivtar in Israel.

Sessions:

• Releasing Captives and Terrorists
• Judaism and Organ Donation

Organisation: LimmudLA
Website: http://www.LimmudLA.org/

Shep is an entertainment lawyer (KGSR), and musician (Ashira/Shep-n'Dave). He lectures at the American Jewish University in Bible Studies and teaches prayer to adults and kids at B’nai-David-Judea and LAJewishHomeSchoolers.org. Shep was LimmudLA's founding co-chair. He remains on LimmudLA's board and is a member of Limmud International Team.

Sessions:

• Joseph's Recourse: A Look at Law in the Torah
• Taking Limmud Back Home - Interactions with the Wider Community
• Jewish Songwriting Workshop

Simon Rosenstone is registered blind and has been blind almost from birth. He doesn't allow his disability to get in the way and one of the things he particularly enjoys is playing Scrabble, which he does with a braille Scrabble set. He also enjoys singing.

Sessions:

• Word for Word - Scrabble Schmabble. Test your brain power
• Shabbat Revisited
• The Blind leading the Blind

Organisation: Attorney at Law

Linda is a practicing Plaintiff's Medical Malpractice Trial Attorney,living in New York City with one daughter. She specializes in complicated medical cases, usually involving very poor, injured women or children. She trained in George Washington Univ. Medical School and Cardozo School Of Law.

Sessions:

• Moshiach Ben David v. Moshiach Ben Yosef
• The real Shangri-La/Treasure Hunt for Almonds in the Torah

Organisation: Center for Traditional Music and Dance
Website: http://www.ctmd.org/

Pete Rushefsky is an internationally renowned performer, composer and teacher of the Jewish tsimbl, a harp-like klezmer instrument employing over 100 strings. He also serves as executive director of the New York based Center for Traditional Music & Dance.

Sessions:

• Klezmer: A Guide for the Perplexed (1 of 2)
• Klezmer for the 21st Century (2 of 2)

Organisation: UJIA JLEC
Website: http://www.ujia.org/

Naomi works as the social welfare informal educator at the Jewish Life Education Centre at the UJIA. Amongst other things, she cares about informal Jewish education, empowering young people and facilitating their development. In her free time she enjoys watching Spurs and studying Talmud (not simultaneously).

Sessions:

• Protest in Israeli Society (1 of 3)
• Protest - This Time It's Personal (2 of 3)
• Burning Books - other routes in education (1 of 3)
• Protest - Preserving the minority opinion (3 of 3)
• Burning Books: Talking about Tricky Topics (2 of 3)
• Burning Books - Israel (3 of 3)