Scholars
Ziva R. Hassenfeld is the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Assistant Professor in Jewish Education at Brandeis University. She studies reading comprehension from a sociocultural perspective, focusing on how children develop interpretations of the Hebrew Bible as a case of student reading development. She uses a variety of qualitative methods, including ethnographic observation, stimulated recall interviewing and think-aloud interviewing.
Erica Frankel is the Director of the Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Experience, the think and do tank of Jewish education of Hillel International, which steers the Jewish Learning Fellowship (JLF). Erica holds a BFA in Dance and an MA in Dance and Sacred Texts from NYU, and is currently a Wexner Field Fellow. Erica and her husband, Dimitry, live in Harlem, where they are Co-Founders of Kehillat Harlem and of Based in Harlem, together mobilizing a Jewish community for more than 600 people each year.
Mindy Gold is founder and lead consultant of EdtechMMG. She is an education and technology consultant working with a wide variety of Jewish educational organizations. She is passionate about providing relationship-based professional learning that builds communities of learners to support ongoing reflective practice.
Elie Holzer is associate professor of Jewish Education at Bar Ilan University. He is a practice-oriented philosopher of Jewish education, who holds rabbinical ordination and a PhD in Jewish thought. His research attends to to the intellectual, ethical and spiritual dimensions of havruta text study; the hermeneutics of “otherness and self” in the teaching and learning of Hasidic homilies; the hermeneutics and spiritual pedagogies of niggun.
Dr. Daniel Olson is the Director of Strategic Initiatives and Research at the National Ramah Commission. He earned his PhD in Education and Jewish Studies from NYU. Before working for National Ramah, he conducted evaluations of Jewish educational and communal initiatives, including Hillel's Jewish Learning Fellowship. He lives in Port Chester, NY with his husband Rabbi Benjamin Goldberg.
Miriam Raider-Roth is the director of the Mandel Teacher Educator Institute. She is a faculty member at the University of Cincinnati where she serves as a professor of Educational Studies and Educational/Community-Based Action Research, and directs the Action Research Center. She is also a founding co-director of the Center for Studies of Jewish Education and Culture at UC. Her research focuses on the relational context of teaching and learning, action research and feminist qualitative research methods. She is author of “Professional Development in Relational Learning Communities: Teachers in Connection” (2017). Her research interests include how relational learning communities contribute to teachers’ transformative learning in professional development settings.
Matt Reingold has been teaching in the Jewish history and Jewish thought departments at TanenbaumCHAT since 2008. A former Wexner Fellow and Davidson Scholar, Matt earned his doctorate from York University. His areas of research are Israel education, arts-based education and Jewish graphic novels. Matt has authored over 30 journal articles about these topics and he is currently working on a manuscript about Israeli graphic novels. Matt lives in Toronto with his wife Chani and daughters Sloan and Nora.
Amanda Strawhacker holds a PhD and MA in child study and human development, and an undergraduate degree in anthropology from Tufts University. Although not a specialist in Jewish education, her research spans disciplinary boundaries of child development, early childhood STEM education and learning sciences. She specializes in qualitative study design and data analysis methodologies, particularly for research with elementary children and teachers in naturalistic learning settings such as museums, schools, makerspaces and camps.