Doctoral Fellows Program
Gathering at the 2024 Network for Research in Jewish Education Conference
The Doctoral Fellows Program is designed to provide advanced doctoral students from North American and Israeli universities with substantial support in their dissertation research endeavors related to Jewish education.
Program Elements
- Collaborative Support: Offer intellectual partnership for refining ideas, enhancing presentations, and advancing academic writing to sustain research momentum during the dissertation phase.
- Mentorship and Resources: Provide tailored mentoring and access to intellectual resources that enhance the strengths of existing doctoral training, customized to each fellow's needs.
- Professional Engagement: Facilitate discussions on the broader landscape of Jewish education and related fields, aiding in career planning and development.
- Financial Support: Provide a stipend of $2,000 for professional development, including conference attendance or data collection.
The fellows are led by Dr. Ilana Horwitz, Assistant Professor and Fields-Rayant Chair of Contemporary Jewish Life at Tulane University. Please direct any questions to Dr. Horwitz: ihorwitz@tulane.edu.
The application for the 2025-2026 Doctoral Fellows cohort is now closed.
Cohort 5: 2024-2025
Reuven Margrett
Reuven Margrett is a Ph.D. candidate in curriculum, instruction, and teacher education at Michigan State University. He is interested in how educators think about and teach Jewish religious texts and how that influences the types of textual encounters and practices they want students to engage in. Concurrent with his Ph.D. studies he is also the Associate Director of the Pardes Center for Jewish Educators helping teachers and leaders improve their instructional practice. Reuven presented at the National Research in Jewish Education Conference 2023 in a session titled Wrestling with the Past, Transforming the Future. How do Jewish congregational school educational directors view the role of their Judaic teachers? He is also the proud recipient of the 2024 MSU Serling Institute for Jewish Studies and Modern Israel's Student Achievement Award.
Emily Reich
Emily Reich is a Ph.D. student in policy, politics and leadership at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on two distinct areas: the expansion of Israeli curricular materials into occupied East Jerusalem, and the Jewish community's efforts to influence both the content and implementation of California's ethnic studies high school graduation requirement. Currently working as a graduate student researcher and substitute teacher for the Oakland Unified School District, Emily brings valuable classroom experience to her academic pursuits. Before embarking on her doctoral studies, she served as a special education teacher in California and an English teacher in Israel, providing her with a diverse background in education across different contexts. Emily holds a bachelor's degree in special education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master's in education from UC Berkeley, building a strong foundation for her current doctoral work.
Orna Siegel
Orna Siegel is a doctoral candidate in Jewish education at the Jewish Theological Seminary’s Davidson School. Her research explores how the interaction between teacher professional identity and motivation affects instructional choices among educators of other faiths in the Jewish early childhood classroom. Orna is the Executive Director of ElevatEd, a national initiative to address the shortage of early childcare teachers in Jewish settings across North America. She earned a master’s degree in Jewish education as a Legacy Heritage Fellow at Hebrew College, where she received the school’s prize for Outstanding Achievement in Jewish Education. Previously, she earned a bachelor’s degree in government from Wesleyan University and studied at Yeshivat Nishmat in Israel. Orna lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with her husband and four children.
Yael M. Silverstein
Yael M. Silverstein is a Ph.D. student in Social-Organizational Psychology at Columbia University’s Teachers College. Her doctoral research is focused on social cognition, particularly exploring stereotypes and their manifestations in attitudes and behaviors within social and organizational contexts. Ms. Silverstein current research study is on "The Antisemitic Experiences Scale: Measure Development and Examination of its Consequences," the aim of which is the creation and validation of a measure to examine the types of antisemitism that are occurring, and an examination of the negative consequences of these experiences, such as symptoms of stress-based trauma, belongingness and organizational commitment. Ms. Silverstein has an MBA from Columbia Business School and is a double degree graduate of Barnard College (B.A.) and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (B.A.).
Cohort 4: 2023-2024
Tamara Frankel
Tamara Frankel is a doctoral candidate in Jewish Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Her research focuses on tefillah education, particularly the role that day school educators play in shaping curriculum and bringing tefillah and academic learning into dialogue with one another. In 2021, she completed her tenure as Jewish Studies faculty and as the Tefillah Coordinator at Rochelle Zell Jewish High School in suburban Chicago. Tamara is a day school graduate herself (TanenbaumCHAT), hailing from Toronto, Canada. She holds a B.A. and B.Ed. from York University and completed her Masters degree in Jerusalem at the Pardes Educators Program in 2011 in conjunction with the Hebrew College of Boston. Tamara considers herself not only a teacher, but a lifelong learner. She recently moved from Chicago to Jerusalem with her avid Cubs fans, Zach, Nadav, and Dorit.
Hannah Z. Kober '16
Dissertation: The Content of Heritage: Israeli-American Parenting Practices at the Nexus of Hebrew Language and Jewish Identity Maintenance (Stanford University, 2024)
Hannah Z. Kober is a PhD Candidate in Educational Linguistics with a Concentration in Jewish Studies at Stanford Graduate School of Education, where she is a Jim Joseph Fellow and Wexner Graduate Fellow-Davidson Scholar. She is interested in the sociology of heritage language learning, with specific attention on the impact of language ideologies and attitudes on Hebrew teaching and learning in North America. Her dissertation focuses on how Israeli-American parents make decisions about Hebrew language learning for and with their children. Hannah has several forthcoming pieces about issues in heritage language learning and/or Jewish Education, including a collaborative work with scholars across language contexts. She most recently served as the Managing Director of the Jewish English Lexicon. Previously, Hannah administered the research division of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, where she is now a David Hartman Center Fellow.
Kimberley Kushner
Kimberley Kushner (sher/her/hers) is a doctoral candidate in Higher Education Administration at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC). Her dissertation focuses on Jewish undergraduate students in contemporary U.S. higher education, examining factors that influence Jewish student sense of belonging within their campus communities. Kimberley earned her undergraduate degree from The Ohio State University in English and her Master of Science in Higher Education and Student Affairs from Indiana University-Bloomington. Kimberley currently lives with her husband, son, and corgi-basset hound in Overland Park, KS (suburb of Kansas City, MO).
Bryan Hanan Oren
Bryan Hanan Oren is a doctoral candidate in Teaching and Learning Sciences at the University of Haifa. His dissertation examines the process by which liberal American Jewish educational institutions socialize American Jewish students around issues of race and equity and the perceptions American Jewish students themselves harbor around issues of race and equity. Currently working as the Director of Youth Organizing – Israel at the URJ, Bryan is a seasoned program facilitator, curriculum developer, and education researcher and has previously held positions for M2 and Facing History and Ourselves—where he led the Jewish Education Program’s work on race and equity in Jewish settings. A Dorot Fellow alumnus, Bryan holds an Masters in Educational Leadership from the University of North Florida and a Bachelors in Comparative Literature from the University of Southern California. Currently, Bryan lives in Jerusalem with his wife Tamar and daughter Aviv.
Cohort 3: 2022-2023
Andrew Ergas
Dissertation: Making a Professional Home in an Old-New Language: Attributes and Anxieties of Nonnative Hebrew Instructors in Jewish Day Schools (Jewish Theological Seminary, 2023)
Andrew Ergas is a doctoral candidate in Jewish education at the Jewish Theological Seminary, with a research focus on Hebrew, identity, and pedagogy. His dissertation examines the attributes and anxieties of non-native Hebrew language instructors in Jewish day schools. He received his BA from UC Santa Cruz, an MPA in nonprofit management from Georgia State University, and rabbinic ordination and a MA in Hebrew literature from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Professionally, Andrew has been a camp director, Israel educator, day school head, and JCC director, and currently serves as the CEO of Hebrew at the Center.
Julie Golding
Dissertation: Vicarious Trauma Exhibited by Visitors to a Central Holocaust Museum (Yeshiva University, 2023)
Julie Golding is a Holocaust educator and the curator at the Holocaust Museum & Center for Tolerance and Education (HMCTE) in Suffern, NY. In 2020 she founded Yesodeinu, an experiential Holocaust education program that teaches resilience at local cemeteries and historical sites. Julie is currently pursuing her PhD at the Azrieli Graduate School for Jewish Education and Administration as the Rabbi Mordecai E. Zeitz Doctoral Fellow and a Wexner Graduate Fellow & Davidson Scholar. Her dissertation “Vicarious Trauma Exhibited by Visitors to a Central Holocaust Museum” investigates secondary traumatic stress, student coping styles, and teaching about difficult histories in museum spaces.
rafa kern
Dissertation: To Belong as Individuals: Making Meaning—Personal and Shared—in Liberal Jewish Talmud Study (Stanford University, 2025)
rafa kern (he/him, pronounced hafa, with a soft h like in human) is a Brazilian Jew who aspires to live a good, beautiful life, and to help others do the same. His research is an attempt to figure out how people learn to do that, and especially how they do that through their relationships with various kinds of media. At present, he is working on a doctoral dissertation at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education about adults learning Torah. During his MA (Columbia University Teachers College) he tried to understand how games can (in theory) be used for personal character development. His BA thesis (Yale University) was a production of Martin Buber’s play about the prophet Elijah, in an attempt to enact Buber’s hermeneutics and shift our collective dialogue towards the I-Thou (which is to say, to help us relate to the world around us as replete with subjects). He grew up in São Paulo and now lives in South Minneapolis with his partner, Sarah.
Sarah Ossey
Sarah Ossey is an advanced doctoral candidate in Education and Jewish Studies at New York University, where she has been a Steinhardt Fellow and a Wexner Graduate Fellow/Davidson Scholar. Her research, for which she was recognized as an Emerging Scholar by the Network for Research in Jewish Education, focuses on social justice education in Jewish day school. She holds an MA from the William Davidson School of Jewish Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary and a BA from Brandeis University. She and her family currently reside in Atlanta.
Cohort 2: 2021-2022
Nadia Beider
Dissertation: Religious Change: Causes and Effects (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2022)
Nadia Beider is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is interested in the construction of, alterations to, and the intergenerational transmission of identities. Her dissertation "Religious Switching: Causes and Effects" explores the nature of religious identity transitions, including conversion, denominational switching, and disaffiliation in the USA and Europe via quantitative analyses of patterns of religiosity and conversion narratives.
Anna Hartman
Dissertation: A Grounded Theory of Young Children’s Theory Development in Jewish Early Childhood Education (Jewish Theological Seminary, 2022)
Anna Hartman is Vice President, JUF Education, at the Jewish United Fund. Anna holds a master's in Jewish educational leadership from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and is a doctoral candidate in Jewish Education at the Jewish Theological Seminary. She has also participated in three study tours of the renowned municipal early childhood centers in Reggio Emilia, Italy. Anna is a recipient of the Pomegranate Prize, JUF's Samuel A. Goldsmith Young Professional Award, and the Covenant Award.
Saul Kaiserman
Dissertation: Being. Called. Rabbi. Educator (in progress)
Saul Kaiserman, RJE (he/him/הוא) is Scholar in Residence and Founding Director of Lifelong Learning for Congregation Emanu-El of the City of New York, where he has served as Director of Lifelong Learning since 2007. In 2013, Saul was inducted by Hazon into its “If Not Now Society” as a “Visionary Leader in Jewish Life and Learning” and in 2019 was recognized as a “Distinguished Jewish Educator” by the Association of Reform Jewish Educators (ARJE). Saul is a doctoral candidate in Jewish education at the Jewish Theological Seminary, where he received his MA in 1999. Saul’s dissertation investigates how rabbi-educators, with both rabbinic ordination and an advanced degree in education, understand their role as teachers and their work as teaching.
Elana Riback Rand
Dissertation: A Minority Within a Minority: Sephardic Adolescents in Ashkenazic Schools (Yeshiva University, 2023)
Elana Riback Rand is a PhD candidate at the Azrieli Graduate School for Jewish Education and Administration. She studies school connectedness, teacher motivation, and dynamics among cultural subgroups within the Orthodox Jewish community. She holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from Columbia University.
Cohort 1: 2020-2021
Dissertation: The Impact of the Student and Milieu on Teacher Ideology: Orthodox Bible Teachers in Non-Orthodox schools in North America (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2023)
Esther Friedman is a PhD candidate at the Melton School of Jewish Education, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and has taught Tanach, chaired the Tanach department, and written Tanach curriculum at Tanenbaum CHAT in Toronto, where she lives with her husband and children. Her dissertation is about teacher personal belief change and is titled “ומתלמידי יותר מכולן [And From my Students Most of All], The Impact of the Student and Milieu on Teacher Ideology: Orthodox Tanach Teachers in non-Orthodox schools in North America.”
Talia Hurwich
Dissertation: Seen but Not Heard? Graphic Novel Adaptations of Texts with Jewish Feminist Religious Significance (New York University, 2021)
Talia Hurwich is pursuing her PhD in Education and Jewish Studies at NYU. Her dissertation “Seen But Not Heard? Graphic Novel Adaptations of Texts with Jewish Feminist Religious Significance” examines the encounter between adolescent reader and graphic novel adaptations of traditional Jewish texts, particularly where issues relating to gender arise, focusing on how graphic novel adaptations of traditional Jewish texts shape a Modern Orthodox Jewish student’s reading of women’s roles in these texts. She has published work on multimodal literacy (particularly with graphic novels) in the ELA as well as STEM classrooms.
Joshua Ladon
Dissertation: The Mediated Torah: Source Sheets and Jewish Knowledge Construction in the Digital Age (Jewish Theological Seminary, 2022)
Joshua Ladon is the West Coast Director of Education for the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. He received a BA from Washington University in St. Louis and subsequently lived in Jerusalem for seven years, completing an MA in Jewish Thought at Tel Aviv University. He received rabbinic ordination from the Shalom Hartman Institute. He is a doctoral student in Jewish education at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. His dissertation investigates practitioner thinking, asking how teachers design source sheets and how source sheets, as a curricular tool, mediate teacher thinking and shape an encounter with the Jewish tradition.
Allison Lester
Dissertation: Connection During Disconnection: A Four-Article Dissertation Exploring the Voices of Undergraduate Students Learning to “Hold Space” for Adolescents Online During the COVID-19 Pandemic (University of Cincinnati, 2022)
As an educator, designer, and researcher, Allison Lester is interested in cultivating playful and vibrant learning spaces where one’s rich historical and cultural narrative can be fostered and sustained through socially just transformative paradigms. She is a doctoral candidate at the University of Cincinnati in the Educational Studies: Educational and Community-based Action Research program. Her dissertation is an action research study with preservice teachers on creating “virtual holding environments” for adolescent learners online during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Continuing the research: ‘What I Thought I Taught, and What My Students Actually Learned’