Neo Chasidic Festival 2023
The Team
Rabba Nava Meiersdorf grew up in an Orthodox community and earned her BA at Emunah College in Theater, Education and Jewish Studies.
She has an MA in Talmud, Halacha and Community Leadership and was ordained at the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary.
During her studies, she served as the rabbinical intern at the Magen Avraham Synagogue in Omer.
She has taught for "ADRABA", the Masorti programme which prepares children with special needs for their Bar and Bat Mitzvah,
and for "Nativ" the National Center for Identity and Conversion.
Five years ago she and her husband, Rabbi Yerach Meiersdorf,
established an innovative and successful new egalitarian minyan in the Ein Karem neighborhood of Jerusalem.
Nava has recently been appointed as Rabbi at the Fuchsberg Center in Jerusalem.
Rabbi Shai Zarchi is one of the founders and leaders of the Beit Midrash for Israeli Rabbis of the Hartman Institute and the Midrasha in Oranim.
He founded the community "Nigun Halev" in the Jezreel Valley and serves as the rabbi of the community, was one of the founders of the Midrasha for Israeli Judaism in Oranim, founded and headed the Beit Midrash "Nigun" for study and creation for joint leadership for religious and secular Jews, and also founded and managed the Beit Midrash "Tehuda" for Jewish leadership (within the Beit Midrash "Kolot").
Zarhi is the recipient of the Liebhaber Prize for encouraging religious tolerance in Israel. He was a co-editor of the essays "Suggestion for Order - Haggadah for Pesach" and "Days of Adam - Rituals of Life".
Dr. Ze’ev Kitzis
Lecturer in Hasidism at Bar Ilan University and founder of the project "Zusha - discovering the Hasidic story", he is a storyteller and musician.
Rabbi Mordechai is an educator and clinical and educational psychologist,
served as Rabbi at Cambridge University and Maale Gilboa Yeshiva.
For the past twenty years, Mordechai has been teaching Hassidut, Jewish Mysticism and Hebrew mythology,
combining his love of Torah with his psychoanalytic understanding.
He has taught at the LSJS in London, served as scholar in residence at Zenith Sufi camp in the Swiss Alps and the Abode in the USA .
Rabbi Prof. Arthur Green is an American scholar of Jewish mysticism and Neo-Hasidic theologian. He was a founding dean of the non-denominational rabbinical program at Hebrew College in Boston. He describes himself as an American Jew who was educated entirely by the generation of immigrant Jewish intellectuals cast up on American shores by World War II. Rabbi Green founded the “Havurat Shalom”, an experimental group for Jewish community life, which over time became the prototype of the “Havurot” in American Jewry that gradually spread. He has written and translated over 20 books which were translated into 7 languages and is a world known scholar and expert in Jewish mysticism and Hassidism. Rabbi Green is also the chair of the Rabbinical advisory board of the Besht Yeshiva in Dresden.
Rebbezin Sarah Weingarten is a mother of 11 children, educator, lecturer, columnist, teacher at 4 Hassidic schools for teenage girls in Monsey, New York, and an expert in early childhood development. She was born, grew up and lives in the Hasidic ultra-Orthodox community in New York and is active in promoting tolerance in the ultra-orthodox community towards children who left the community. For this purpose, she also founded an organization that supports parents whose children have left the community. Rebbezin Weingarten serves as the Chair of the educational committee of the Besht Yeshiva in Dresden
Micki Weinberg is a filmmaker and writer based in Berlin. Born in Los Angeles, he graduated with a Bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 2004. He left the states for graduate studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where he focused on intertextuality in ancient Jewish literature. He also studied Talmud at the Mir Yeshiva. Weinberg worked at Goldman Sachs from 2007-2010 in London and Switzerland. Micki has been leading text based study groups in Berlin and other cities since 2011. In 2018 Micki founded SHIUR in Berlin, and the organization has since expanded to different cities in Europe and North America.
Rabbi Akiva Weingarten is a German-American rabbi. He serves as the rabbi of the city of Dresden and the Liberal Jewish community "Migwan" in Basel, Switzerland. He is the founder of the Haichal Besht synagogue in Bnei Brak, the Haichal Besht synagogue in Berlin, and the Besht Yeshiva in Dresden.
Rabbi Weingarten grew up in the Satmar Hasidic community in New Jersey and received his first rabbinic ordination at the age of 17 and was later ordained in Israel two more times. He has a BA in Jewish Theology from the University of Potsdam and describes his approach to Judaism as "liberal Hasidic".
