Leadership

Rabbi Rich Kirschen

Director
Rabbi Kirschen is the director of the Anita Saltz International Education Center. He was ordained by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 1996. Before making aliyah to Israel he served as a Hillel director for eight years. He was the executive director of the Hillel at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Prior to that, he was associate director of the University of Michigan Hillel in Ann Arbor, MI. Kirschen’s instructional area of expertise, “Like All the Nations? Understanding Public Culture, Sovereignty and Religion in the Jewish State." is a part of the wide-ranging curriculum being taught by the Saltz Education Center. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife Cara Saposnik a documentary filmmaker and their three children.

Rich@wupj.org.il

Paul Liptz

Director of Education
Professor Paul Liptz is a social historian who lectures in the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University, and in Israel Studies at the Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem. He has published articles on contemporary Jewry and Jewish History and has lectured and conducted workshops in 12 countries. In addition, he has traveled throughout Europe with numerous groups and is recognized as an outstanding Scholar in Residence, who is capable of translating complex issues and realities into language we can all understand. Over the years Professor Liptz has moved from "straight" History and now incorporates Sociology and Political Science in his teaching.

pbliptz@netvision.net.il

Rabbi Stacey Blank

Project Coordinator
Stacey has served Jewish communities all over the world including two years in Poland as part of the Jewish Service Corps of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and two years as student rabbi in California. She has also served in congregations in South Africa and Australia for the High Holidays and acted as the Services Coordinator of NFTY youth trips traveling in Europe and Israel.

Stacey co-founded HUC’s Pesach Partnership in cooperation with the WUPJ which sends students to the Former Soviet Union to lead Pesach seders. Stacey made Aliyah in 2005 and is married to Tamir. Stacey writes midrash and has a wide range of experience facilitating and teaching different types of prayer from traditional to meditative, from synagogues to mountaintops to Venetian water taxis.

Dalya Levy

Administration & Logistics
Dalya Levy has lived in Israel since 1968. She was Israel’s first private banker and was a pioneer of the profession of business mentoring in Israel. Especially interested in strengthening the business skills of women entrepreneurs, she founded and led the Jerusalem Business Women’s Forum. In 1999 she transitioned to the not-for-profit sector as the administrator of Micha, the early childhood center for deaf and hearing-impaired children in Jerusalem. At the same time she joined ARZENU, the International Federation of Reform and Progressive Religious Zionists as its coordinator and was recently named as its director. Since its inception she has been active in promoting and organizing the Israel Movement’s Riding4Reform bike rides. Attracted to the idea of building an educational center for Progressive learning, she joined the Saltz Center team in 2005. She serves on the Board of IRAC, the Israel Religious Action Center, and is the chair of its sub-committee for social action and tikkun olam, the Keren B’Chavod Fund.