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 Director of Faculty and a Senior Fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, where she directs the activities of the Kogod Research Center for Contemporary Jewish Thought and consults on the content of lay and professional leadership programs. Elana earned her doctorate in Religion from Columbia University where she wrote her dissertation on the topic of legal loopholes as a prism for understanding rabbinic views on law and ethics. She is an alumna of the Yeshiva University Graduate Program in Advanced Talmudic Studies (GPATS) as well as the Consortium in Jewish Studies and Legal Theory Graduate Fellowship at Cardozo School of Law.

Tammy Jacobowitz received her B.A. in English Literature from University of Pennsylvania and graduated from the Scholars Circle at Drisha. She earned a Ph.D. in Midrash from the University of Pennsylvania, where she also studied as a Wexner Fellow. She was named a 2021 Jewish Women Scholars’ Writing Fellow by Sefaria. She is currently working on a parsha book geared for parents learning Vayikra with young children. She is the founding director of Makom B’Siach at SAR, an immersive adult education program for parents.

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.