Keynote Speakers

Yair Rosenberg

Yair Rosenberg serves as the senior writer for Tablet Magazine. He writes about the intersection of religion, politics and culture. Rosenberg’s work has been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The Washington Post and The Guardian.

Chelsea Garbell

Chelsea Garbell works at the intersection of religion, gender, and peace and security. She currently serves as research scholar and program manager at the Applied Research Collective for American Jewry at NYU, where she also oversees the Interfaith Entrepreneur Fellowship. She has previously held positions at the Asia Society Policy Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Of Many Institute for Multifaith Leadership. Chelsea is active with the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom, the NY Muslim Jewish Advisory Council, Planned Parenthood NYC, KAHAL: Your Jewish Home Abroad, and AJC.

Haroon Moghul

Haroon Moghul is a Pakistani-American academic and a commentator on Islam and public affairs. He has written for the Washington Post, TIME, CNN, Guardian, Foreign Policy and Haaretz and has appeared on CNN, the BBC, NPR and the History Channel. He is the author of How to be a Muslim: An American Story and is the Fellow in Jewish-Muslim Relations at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. His forthcoming book will be an introduction to Islamic theology and spirituality.

David Bezmozgis

David Bezmozgis is an award-winning writer and filmmaker who has appeared at The New Yorker Festival, The UCLA Armand Hammer Museum, and the Luminato Festival. His work has been broadcast on NPR, BBC, and the CBC, and his stories have been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2005 & 2006.

MI POLIN

MI POLIN (Hebrew for “From Poland”) is the first Judaica brand created and manufactured in Poland since World War II. MI POLIN is run by accomplished artist Helena Czernek and Aleksander Prugar, an award-winning photojournalist. Their original Jewish ritual objects are in the permanent collection of The Jewish Museum in New York and are carried by the most prominent Jewish museums internationally.  In Fall 2019, they will be in Toronto for an artist residency including the debut of original exhibitions at the FENTSTER window gallery and the Miles Nadal JCC, presented in cooperation with the Sarah and Chaim Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre.

Rabbi Menachem Creditor

Rabbi Menachem Creditor is the Pearl and Ira Meyer Scholar-in-Residence at UJA-Federation New York and the founder of Rabbis Against Gun Violence. He has published 20 books and six albums of original Jewish music, including None Shall Make Them Afraid and Olam Chesed Yibaneh. Named by Newsweek as one of the fifty most influential rabbis in America, he has been involved in the leadership of American Jewish World Service, AIPAC and the One America Movement, an organization dedicated to bringing together Americans of different faiths and opinions.

Yvonne Green

Yvonne Green was born to a multilingual Central Asian family in London. She originally practiced law before she burst onto the poetry scene with Boukhara, which won the 2007 Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition. Yvonne has since published four more collections: The Assay; After Semyon Izraelivich Lipkin, the 2011 Poetry Book Society’s Translation Choice; Honoured, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; and most recently Jam and Jerusalem. Her work takes us into the unfamiliar world of Boukhara and Judeo-Tajik culture and has been described as ‘vivid’, ‘enthralling’ and ‘unforgettable.’

Maurice Yacowar

Maurice Yacowar is a film professor and former dean at Brock University, Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and the University of Calgary. His latest book is titled: Reading Shtisel: A Television Masterpiece from Israel. At Limmud, he will be talking about the familial, political and religious constructions in the critically acclaimed Israeli TV show Shtisel.

Daniel C. Kurtzer

Daniel C. Kurtzer is the S. Daniel Abraham Professor of Middle East Policy Studies at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. During a 29-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service, Ambassador Kurtzer served as the U.S. Ambassador to Israel and as the U.S. Ambassador to Egypt. He is the co-author of Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East, co-author of The Peace Puzzle: America’s Quest for Arab-Israeli Peace, 1989-2011, and editor of Pathways to Peace: America and the Arab-Israeli Conflict.