Mentors

Raizi Chechik is a veteran educational leader with over two decades of experience as a Head of School, most recently at Manhattan Day School. She has also worked as a Principals Partnership mentor for Yeshiva University, and a curriculum coordinator for the Sephardic Studies Institute at the City University of New York. Raizi has been the recipient of numerous professional awards and honors, among them the national Grinspoon Award for Excellence in Jewish Education and a fellowship at Columbia University’s Middle East Institute. A passionate student of Jewish texts, Raizi has been an invited guest scholar at over 100 institutions and communities around the world, lecturing on topics of biblical and rabbinic literature, as well as Jewish history and education. Raizi currently serves as the Community Scholar at the Jewish Center of Manhattan, and is also a fellow at the Center for Israel Studies at YU, where she is completing a PhD in modern Jewish History focusing on aspects of education within the Lithuanian Jewish community.

Dr. Elana Stein Hain is the Rosh Beit Midrash at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, where she researches, writes, teaches and podcasts (TEXTing IRL), seeking to relate Torah to contemporary questions. She is the author of Circumventing the Law: Rabbinic Perspectives on Loopholes and Legal Integrity and gives a weekly big ideas shiur based on daf yomi at hadran.org called Din and Daf. She is currently at work on her next book: Torah for Democracy: Religious Zionist Perspectives. She and her beloved family live in NYC.

Dr. Tammy Jacobowitz is the chair of the Tanakh department at the SAR High School, and is the founding director of Makom B'Siach at SAR, an immersive adult learning program for parents. At SAR, she also mentors teachers across the school in the art of facilitation. Tammy is an adjunct faculty member of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, where she teaches the Pedagogy of Tanakh. Tammy teaches teens for the Wellspring program at the Shalom Hartman Institute as well as Midrash for their rabbinical program. Tammy recently directed a research group in Adult Jewish learning for the Mandel Center at Brandeis. Tammy was a member of the Inaugural Cohort of the Sefaria Word-by-Word Writing Circle, completing a book titled “Bringing Vayikra Home, which offers parents contemporary access points for learning Vayikra with their children. She studied in the Drisha Scholars Circle and received her PhD in Midrash at the University of Pennsylvania as a Wexner Graduate fellow.

Rivy Poupko Kletenik, a 2002 Exceptional Jewish Educator Covenant Award Winner, just completed sixteen years as Head of School at the Seattle Hebrew Academy. Rivy is an enthusiastic writer and devotee of poetry and literature. Her column “What’s Your JQ” appeared for years in the JT News and then “Jewish in Seattle Magazine”. She is thrilled and proud to be awarded the Simon Rockower American Jewish Press Association Excellence in Commentary.

Sara Tillinger Wolkenfeld is the Chief Learning Officer at Sefaria, an online database and interface for Jewish texts. Sara is also a fellow at the David Hartman Center at the Hartman Institute of North America, and is a member of Class Six of the Wexner Field Fellowship. Her previous experience includes serving as Director of Education at the Center for Jewish Life – Hillel at Princeton University as part of the OU’s Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus and serving on faculty at the Drisha Institute for Jewish Education.