Speakers Bios

LILLIE P. ALLEN
Lillie P. Allen is the Executive Director of Be Present, Inc., a consultant to the Pettus-Crowe Foundation, and a member of the National Network of Grantmakers, Women's Caucus. She has been involved in public health education for over twenty years and has a broad background in human development, interpersonal relations, group dynamics and the interconnections and conflicts between work, home and personal goals.

In 1983, Lillie introduced the Black & Female: What Is the Reality?© workshop, which continues to serve as a primary catalyst for entry into and participation of African-American women in the health and empowerment movements. In 1988, she created the Sisters & Allies© workshop for African-American women, other women of color, and white women. This workshop and intensive training series served as a foundation for the development of a grassroots national network of women and girls committed to social change. It is a vehicle for women to strengthen their families, organizations, workplaces and communities and to develop the ability to work effectively with issues of diversity and multi-culturalism in a community of practice.

In 1989, Lillie established the Lillie Allen Institute, Inc., thus expanding her work to include training and development consulting services for corporations, education and medical institutions, and government agencies. In 1992, she founded Be Present, Inc., a non-profit organization committed to improving the economic, health, political, and social status of women and girls by developing individual and collective leadership capabilities. Her focus on understanding and working with diversity, as well as her expertise in assisting individuals, institutions, and agencies to examine themselves and the misinformation which is communicated in our culture, provides a new and holistic framework for interacting and working cooperatively within the movement for change.

As a consultant, Lillie brings to her work significant experience in support group development and interpersonal communications. She also brings her extraordinary skills at creating open and meaningful dialogue among groups of people and working effectively through the racism, sexism, classism, and other forms of oppression that have an adverse impact on people's lives.

She has consulted on organizational development issues with Tellus Communication, Canadian Pacific Limited, Procter & Gamble Corporation, National Abortion Rights Action League, National Hispana Leadership Institute, Northern Manhattan Perinatal Partnership, and Congregation Bet Haverim. On program analysis and design, she has worked with the City of Oakland, Riverside Methodist Hospital, National Network of Grantmakers, New Leaf Distributing Company, and Du Pont Corporation. She has developed diversity training for the Atlanta History Center, GE Capital, Threshold Foundation, Northwestern University, National Black Leadership Initiative on Cancer, Georgia Legal Services, and Georgia Perinatal Case Management Association. Internationally, Lillie also introduced her groundbreaking Be Present Empowerment Model© at the End Decade Conference on Women, Nairobi, Kenya; University of the West Indies, Barbados, West Indies; and Rural Women's Leadership Project, Belize, Central America. [This is a partial listing.]

Lillie holds a Masters in Public Health from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of Public Health, where her educational concentration was in community organization and school and community education.

JUDY ANDREAS
Judy Andreas, Director of Catalyst to Coalition, founded the organization in 2004 to present the first FACING A CHALLENGE WITHIN conference in Oakland, California. She is a lifelong grassroots activist with experience in multicultural, feminist, neighborhood, anti-oppression, disability rights, queer, and environmental movements. Her belief in solidarity across differences in privilege has led her to use her privilege as a secular Christian in confronting anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and prejudice against other traditionally oppressed groups.

For many years, Judy studied international history and culture as an independent scholar while employed in blue collar service positions. She is a member of Service Employees International Union and is currently a doctoral candidate pursuing her Ph.D. in the area of anti-Semitism and The Left. She sees anti-Jewish bias once again being used to divide natural allies and weaken the social justice/ social change movements of the U.S. and the world.
* Please click on "Catalyst to Coalition" button at www.facingachallenge.com to clarify confusion about my name on the world wide web.

ROB AUGMAN
Rob Augman is a board member of the Institute for Anarchist Studies (www.anarchist-studies.org) and the Free Society Collective (www.freesocietycollective.org). He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

NANCY BELOWICH-NEGRON
Nancy Belowich-Negron has served as the Director of the Disability Resources Center at the State University of New York at Albany for the past 25 years. She is involved on a statewide basis in both advocacy and training about the oppression that saddles people with disabilities. She has also Chaired her campus Affiliate of the National Coalition Building Institute for over a decade. Nancy also serves on NCBI’s National Campus Leadership Team and Co-Chairs an International Committee on Religious Intolerance. Since 9/11 the University at Albany has been generating opportunities for Jewish and Muslim students to meet on common ground and build better relationships with one another.
In acknowledgement and support of those efforts the University’s NCBI Affiliate, in conjunction with Hillel, received a $50,000 grant from the United Jewish Federation of New York to get students from all different backgrounds to attend a three day NCBI Train the Trainer where they learned skills about reducing prejudice and gaining skills about coalition building. A second Train the Trainer was also supported for Jewish students, staff, faculty and members of the community to come together to learn those same skills as well as skills to deal with escalating anti-Semitism. Nancy and her husband Pablo Negron and their two teenage daughters, Shaina and Dara are all actively involved in NCBI activities to help make their school and work environments more user friendly.

GARY BROUSE

Gary Brouse is Director of Corporate Governance and Director of Militarism and Violence in Our Society, as part of his work with the American Indigenous Coalition on Institutional Accountability and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. He is one of the foremost experts on corporate-indigenous relationships.

CLAUDIA CHAVES
Claudia Chaves has long been an activist attempting to create healthy human culture through various efforts such as participation in social justice, peace and the environmental movements and the intentional community movement. She became an activist in countering anti-Semitism in the Left after experiencing it abundantly in her circle of friends and activist colleagues. She is a multicultural psychotherapist who, in recent years, started to study also the effects of prejudice on Jews, and the issue of internalized anti-Semitism, especially in Jews in the Left. She is a thinker and writer on various psychology topics, the broadest of which is an attempt to explain why human behavior, in groups large and small, is as disturbed as it is, and what can realistically be done to create wise culture.

ANDREAS COHEN-KEINER
Andrea Cohen-Kiener is the director of the InterReligious Eco-Justice Network, a faith based- initiative in environmental theology and practice. Andrea has degrees in Hebrew Literature, Secondary Education and Pastoral Counseling. She was ordained as a rabbi in July of 2000 by The Alliance for Jewish Renewal. She has served as the spiritual leader of Congregation Pnai Or of Central Connecticut since 1998.
Andrea is a certified Compassionate Listening trainer. She traveled to Israel, the West Bank and Gaza with TCLP 5 times. She is active in interfaith dialogue in her home community of Hartford.

Publications
To All Who Call: A Manual for Enhancing Prayer Instruction, co-authored with Jeffrey Hoffman, published by Melton Center for Research in Jewish Education, 2000
Conscious Community: A Guide to Inner Work, translated from B'nai Machshava Tova, a Hasidic work on prayer and spirituality by the martyred Rebbe, Kalanymous Kalman Shapira; published by Jason Aronson, 1996
Life on Earth: A Guide to Self-Awareness and Communication, a curriculum for Jewish Teenagers; self-published; 1997

Frequent Topics
Jewish Spiritual Practice for teens, adults and/or Jewish educators;
Issues in Interfaith Dialogue;
Enneagram: Template for Personal Growth;
Various Topics in Jewish Feminism;
Ecology: Spirit and Practice
The Psychology of Peacemaking: Reflections on Compassionate Listening
Jewish Renewal, Meditation, and Kabbalah;
Enhancing Congregational Worship;
Social Wealth and Consumer Empowerment

SHARON E. COOPER
Sharon is an Artistic Associate and Co-Production Manager of Milk Can Theatre off Broadway. She is currently working on writing, sending out scripts, video production, and Spring 200's The Hamlet Plays. She has created an 8 minute video based on her time in Israel in the summer of 2004. "In the next chunk of time, I want to decide if I'm going to expand this footage into a documentary."
You can learn more about Sharon at www.milkcantheatre.org

RICK DAVIS
Rick Davis is a social and economic activist who has worked with Judy Andreas since close to the inception of Catalyst to Coalition. A former Manhattan resident, he was a member of B'nai Jeshurun, a community that awakened his spirit of tikkun. Leaving a corporate career in 1996, Rick spent 5 years in Romania working on humanitarian projects. Since his childhood in the UK, Antisemitism has been a consuming concern and recently chased him out of the UK after a short stay from 2000-2002. He now moderates workshops on neo-Antisemitism at conferences, JCC's, and synagogues as well as continuing his humanitarian and environmental activism.

LIZ FANIA WERNER
Liz Fania Werner is a writer, performer, educator and activist. She is co-member and co-founder of the creative partnership, Uptown Hieroglyphic. She works to integrate political and creative elements into all of her work. Werner has created and executed several peace-oriented public-poetry installations in New York City, including Operation Enduring Pigeon (2001) and Blackout Poems(2002). From 2001-2005 she worked in conjunction with the Center for Immigrant Families to create and pilot a Popular Education English-for-Speakers-of-Other-Languages (ESOL)/Community Organizing workshop. In addition, she has led hundreds of creative writing workshops for incarcerated adolescents in the South Bronx through the Bronx Council on the Arts. Other publications/writing credits include: Antipoems: How to Look Better and Feel Great (New Directions Publishers, 2004), a book of translations of Chilean poet Nicanor Parra’s latest work; and The Queen of Exile, a one-woman show based on the life and death of Renaissance conversa Jewish freedom-fighter and entrepreneur Doña Gracia Nasi. Werner grew up in the heavily Leftist-Jewish Amalgamated neighborhood of the Bronx and now lives in Jackson Heights, Queens.

PAMELA FREEMAN
Pamela Freeman has worked in the struggle for social justice for over 30 years. She is the founder of the Philadelphia Black Women's Health Project, past board member of various community/womens/ health/ ant-violence organizations and boards. Currently, she is co-director of Playback for Change, an Improvisational theater company dedicated to using PB theater as a vehicle for social change. For paid work, she is a consultant for Spirit In Action, a national organization, looking at how to incorporate spirituality into social justice groups, a clinical consultant for working with the chronically mentally ill, and adjunct faculty for Bryn Mawr School of Social work and Social Research.

GARY GERSHON ZVADIA
Gary Gershon Zvadia is the Vice-President of Chassida Shmella Ethiopian Jewish organization in New York. Gary's family was instrumental is reconnecting Ethiopia's Jews with Israel. His grandfather, from the largest Jewish village in Ethiopia, sent family to Israel in 1956 to study and to reconnect with the world Jewish community. His father is a hero of Ethiopian Jewry's return to Israel, involved with Operation Moses and Operation Solomon. He endured three years imprisonment by Ethiopia for his Jewish activism. Gary will speak on the Opening Panel about his family's experience of anti-Jewish oppression in Ethiopia and of the difficulties of Ethiopians in Israel today.

DAVID HIRSH
I am a lecturer in sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London. I teach a number of first year introductory courses, a second year course called "Nationalism, Fundamentalism, Cosmopolitanism" and a postgrad course called "Social Theory of Human Rights and Cosmopolitan Law".
    My PhD thesis, which later became my book "Law against Genocide: Cosmopolitan Trials" http://www.cavendishpublishing.com/html/moreinfo.asp?BookID=536903487&catidd was an exploration of genocide and ethnic cleansing, as well as the international legal responses to these crimes against humanity.
    In April 2005 I was dismayed to find that my union, the Association of University teachers, had made a decision to try to exclude Israeli teachers, thinkers, researchers and students from the global academic community. I, together with some colleagues formed Engage, a campaign against the boycott, which later became a campaign against antisemitism www.EngageOnline.org.uk.  The rank and file membership forced our union to re-call its conference, forced a free and democratic debate on campuses in the UK and we had the decision overwhelmingly reversed.
    Since the mid 1980s I have been part of the dual political battle - against antisemitism on the left and in the labour movement - and also against the Israeli occupation and the Israeli settler movement.
    Here are some links to things that I have written recently on the boycott movement, anti-Zionism and antisemitism:

http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=102

http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=280

http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=274

http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=222

http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=211

http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=206

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1129540643095&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

http://www.progressives.org.uk/magazine/Default.asp?action=magazine&articleid=940

MIMI JEFFERSON
Mimi is the Director of the Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender Caucus of the National Coalition Building Institute. She is also a founding member of NCBI, having been with the organization since its inception in 1984. A counselor, consultant, and respected trainer, she has traveled across the United States for the last twenty years – leading workshops on team-building, leadership development, conflict resolution, and celebrating diversity. She works with non-profit and political organizations, universities, schools, churches, and businesses to teach skills that assist people to work more effectively in groups, not to mention have more fun together! She has led training programs with hundreds of organizations, including the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Creating Change Conference, Equality Alabama, LGBTIQ Community Centers, and GALA. She recently led, with a team of NCBI leaders, a four day leadership conference for key LGBTIQ activists from across the United States. When Mimi is not on the road leading LGBTIQ liberation work, she can be found at home in New York City, where she is an actor and activist.

MELANIE KAYE/KANTROWITZ
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz is the former director of the Queens College/CUNY Worker Education Extension Center and founding director of Jews for Economic and Racial Justice. Kaye/Kantrowitz, a writer, scholar, teacher, and long-time social justice activist, has taught writing, women's studies, Jewish studies, and race theory all over the United States, including as the Jane Watson Irwin Distinguished Professor of Women's Studies at Hamilton College and the Belle Zeller Professor of Public Policy at Brooklyn College/CUNY. Kaye/Kantrowitz is the author of several books, including The Issue Is Power: Essays on Women, Jews, Violence, and Resistance; My Jewish Face & Other Stories; and Diaspora: A Novel. She co-edited The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women's Anthology, which, along with The Issue Is Power is widely taught in women's studies and philosophy classes
DR. Christopher MacDonald-Dennis, Ed.D.

JOHN KUO WEI TCHEN
Associate Professor in the Gallatin School of Individualized Study and Associate Professor of History in the Faculty of Arts and Science; Director of Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program
Ph.D. 1992, New York University; B.A. 1973, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Major Interests: urban and cross cultural studies, racialization and intergroup relations, comparative diasporas, public humanities, the role of urban universities in the life of the city, Asians in the Americas.
Selected Works:
New York Before Chinatown: Orientalism, and Shaping of American Culture, 1776-1882. Johns Hopkins University Press. 1999.
Senior creative consultant & interviewee, Talk to Me, a one hour documentary by Andrea Simon, Arcadia Pictures, and co-director of A More Perfect Union: Americans in Conversation Project, 1994-97. PBS satellite telecast. January 1997.
The Chinese Laundryman: A Study of Social Isolation, by Paul C. P. Siu, editor & introduction. New York University Press. 1987.
Genthe's Photographs of San Francisco's Old Chinatown, 1895-1906. Dover Publications. 1984.
Curator, "Eight Pound Livelihood: Chinese Laundry Workers in the United States" exhibition, co-production of New York State Museum and New York Chinatown History Project, 1982-84.
Affiliations: Smithsonian Council of the Smithsonian Museum; Advisory Committee, Center for Folklife and Cultural Studies; Smithsonian Institution; Founder, Museum of Chinese in the Americas, N.Y.; Association of Asian American Studies.
Fellowships/Honors: Centennial Historian of The City of New York, New York City 100 Commission; People's Hall of Fame Award, Citylore, New York; City of New York Mayor's Award of Honor for Arts & Culture; Charles Frankel Prize, National Endowment for the Humanities (National Humanities Medal); New York State Governor's Art Award; American Book Award, Before Columbus Foundation, 1984.

CHARLES LENCHNER
Charles Lenchner is the Rabbinic Dept. Producer at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in New York City. He has more than 15 years of experience in working for social change and peace in Israel and the United States.
Born in the United States, Charles spent grew up in Israel and spent most of his life there. He became politically active in high school, and co-founded the Shministim, a youth group intent on refusing to serve in the Occupied Territories. (1987).

In his professional career, Charles has founded, led and consulted with a variety of nonprofits:
Peace: International Center for Peace in the Middle East, The Parents Circle, Jews for Peace in Palestine and Israel, Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, The Shalom Center Environment: Green Action, Friends of the Earth Middle East, Philly Beyond Oil
Political: Hadash, Hagada Hasmalit (The Left Bank), Kucinich for President, Progressive Democrats of America
Human Rights: Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, Hamoked – Center for the Defense of the Individual
Religious/Jewish Community: Congregation Am-Kolel, Congregation B’nai Jeshurun

Charles has traveled widely, lecturing on Israeli-Palestinian peace in Copenhagen, Porto Allege (Brazil), Stockholm, London, Washington D.C., San Francisco and New York. He led two tours of American Jews to the West Bank.

Charles is proud of being present for some of the highwater marks of the world wide ‘anti-globalization movement’, including J18 (Global Carnival Against Capitalism), anti-WTO demonstrations in 1999, and anti-World Bank demonstrations in Prague in 2000. These events helped crystallize the nascent Israeli wing of that movement.
Since the start of the war in Iraq, Charles has attended both national conferences for United for Peace & Justice, the main peace coalition organizing to end it. He currently serves as the New York State Coordinator for Progressive Democrats of America, and is volunteering for the Jonathan Tasini campaign for U.S. Senate.

Link to ‘Jews and the Anti-War Movement’ by Charles Lenchner and Malka Fenyvesi
http://www.shalomctr.org/node/393

AVRAM B. LYON
Avi Lyon was a leader of the Baltimore-Washington Union of Jewish Students, and a founder of the Jewish Student Network and the North American Jewish Student Appeal of which he was Executive Director. He helped found the Student Division of the Jewish Agency in
Jerusalem where he worked for a number of years. As a student at Hebrew University he was the author of the first public exchange between Israeli and Palestinian students in the late 60s. He was also part of the team that rescued and absorbed thousands of Polish Jews expelled from Poland in 1968, setting up housing and seminars in Israel for Polish students.

· Executive Director of the Jewish Labor Committee for past eight years.
· Member of the NY City Central Labor Council, and has written extensively about the Jewish Community and organized labor
· Served as Associate Dean of Continuing Education at Pratt Institute, and Associate Professor of Administration at Boston State College (now University of Massachusetts ).
· Member of the board of the Jewish Material Claims Conference Against Germany, the board of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture, Secretary of the Forward Association, member of the board of NCSJ, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the Workmen's Circle MultiCare Center and the executive committee of the Hebrew Academy of Morris County.
· holds a BA in Geography and Economics from the Maryland University and an M.Ed. in Administration, Planning and Social Policy from Harvard University 's Graduate School of Education

DR. CHRISTOPHER MACDONALD-DENNIS
Christopher MacDonald-Dennis, Ed.D. has been a scholar-activist for more than fifteen years. He has been involved with many social change and anti-oppression movements, including the feminist movement, LGBT movement, and anti-racism. A raised-working class biracial Jewish gay men, Chris has long understood that all oppression is interconnected and that all forms of oppression must be fought. He received his BA from Framingham State College in Massachusetts, his MS from Northeastern University and his Ed.D. in Social Justice Education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Originally from Boston, he currently lives in Philadelphia.

LIZ MANLIN
Liz Manlin is a senior at Temple University. In May, she will graduate with a B.A. in Spanish language and literature and a certificate in secular Jewish studies. In 2002, she starred in The George Washington University's production of A Shayna Maidel. In 2005, she researched the origins of Jewish fear, focusing specifically on post-holocaust discourse and texts. She is interested in the psychological influences that affect the livelihood of the Jewish people. Since the womb, Liz has cultivated a loving, challenging, and enduring commitment to the Jewish people.

NOA MOHLABANE
Noa Mohlabane is Co-Director of Bay Area Sisters & Allies Leadership Training Project, a Regional Core Group of Be Present, Inc. Born in New York, she lived in Israel until she was seven when she moved to the Bay Area in California. Noa has been a community organizer for most of her life. Her personal, family and community experience has been diverse in terms of race, class, religion and sexual orientation. Her work with Be Present, Inc. over the past 18 years has provided on-going opportunities to take the risk to speak openly and honestly in order to understand more of her own history and build solid, healthy relationships. Noa has an MA in Human Development, with a specialization in Parent/Community Work. She has 40 years of experience in teaching and working with children and families

EMILY NEPON
Emily Nepon lives in Philadelphia and is completing a B.A. in Jewish Studies and Organizational Development at Goddard College, where she is currently writing a
thesis on the history and impact of New Jewish Agenda. Previously, Nepon worked as Program Director of The Shalom Center (2003-2005) and as founding Director of The Self-Education Foundation (1998-2003), among other nonprofit organizations. Nepon loves to coordinate and star in queer performance spectacles, such as 2003's "SUCK MY TREYF GENDER!" and won the 1999 Philadelphia Drag King contest with her performance as bar mitzvah boy Ben Hesherman. (nepone@goddard.edu)

TIFFANY OSEDRA MILLER
Tiffany Osedra Miller is a creative writer and performer from the Bronx. She is co-member and co-founder of the creative partnership, Uptown Hieroglyphic which concerns itself with merging artistic sensibility with the liberation of the oppressed. She has taught creative writing workshops for children in after school programs, homeless shelters and currently teaches ongoing creative writing workshops for senior citizens in the Bronx. Her written work explores the impact of colonialism on contemporary views of race, religion, sex and class. She is an award-winning screenwriter, who is author of the screenplays Where the Body Lies, City of the Vein, as well as the plays, In the Strings of Red Puppets, and Ham. She has also written numerous short stories, song lyrics and a collection of poems. Miller has performed at various theaters, such as the Nuyorican Poet’s Café, The Dunbar Theater in Louisiana, the Grange Court Theater in London, and the National Black Theater in Harlem. She is currently developing her third screenplay.

BIZU RIKI MULLU
Buzu Riki Mullu is president of Chassida Shmella Ethiopian Jewish organization in New York. She is an Ethiopian-Jewish activist and designer who divides her time between Jerusalem and New York. She came to Israel at the age of 12, in 1977, before the first mass exodus, and without the rest of her family. In the mid-1980's, she worked for Youth Aliyah in Israel, helping Ethiopian Jewish orphans who had been airlifted to Israel in Operation Moses. In 1987 Riki returned to Ethiopia, where she spent eight months getting permission for her parents and siblings to emigratae to Israel. Whe paricipated in Operation Solomon in 1991, and devotes much of her time to speaking about Jewish like in Ethiopia and the absorption of Ethiopian-Israeli immigrants. As an artist, she designs bold, bright jewelry, with Ethiopian metals, as well as colorful Judaica items such as hand-embroidered tallitot.

APRIL ROSENBLUM
April Rosenblum is an independent scholar and activist researching how Left movements can improve their responses to antisemitism. The project will develop teaching tools for activist movements, including a pamphlet "The Past Didn't Go Anywhere: Making Resistance to Antisemitism Part of All of Our Movements." Her next project is a book about the future of Jewish anarchism (www.pinteleyid.com).

MARTY SCHWARTZ
Marty is director of Social and Economic Justice programs for Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring New York/ New Jersey. See www.circle.org for more on the organization's activism for worker's and immigrant rights, health care, and against child labor.

RALPH SELIGER
Ralph Seliger is editor of Israel Horizons, the publication of Meretz USA, and blogs regularly at www.MeretzUSA.blogspot.com. He is also on the editorial advisory council of Jewish Currents and an advisory editor of Engage at www.EngageOnline.org.uk.

DARA SILVERMAN
Dara Silverman, the Director for Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ), has dedicated the past decade of her professional life to supporting under-represented communities in their fight against systemic oppression. Her background in social justice and community organizing ranges from working on living wage campaigns, advocating for fair public housing and education for immigrant communities, and empowering others to speak out effectively about corporate globalization, welfare reform, and the needs of their own communities.

In many ways, Dara's work is rooted in the Jewish tradition's obligation to pursue justice. In 1997 Dara joined the Jewish Organizing Initiative, a social action fellowship based in Boston. She helped to found another Boston-based group, Tekiah: A Jewish Call to Action, which draws connections between the experiences of Jewish families that immigrated to America a few generations ago and immigrant families today. In 2004, Dara joined JFREJ.

After 9/11, JFREJ launched an immigrant justice campaign in coalition with ally organizations in response to the attacks on immigrants all over the city and the country, and the Jewish Immigrant Justice (JIJ) campaign emerged. JFREJ members, staff and board decided that as a progressive Jewish organization doing immigrant justice work JFREJ should also prioritize supporting organizing in Jewish immigrant communities. For more on Jews For Racial and Economic Justice, visit their web site at www.jfrej.org

SPENCER SUNSHINE
Spencer Sunshine is part of the 'Fifth Estate' and Autonomedia editorial collectives, and is a volunteer at the ABC No Rio Zine Library. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

ORIT TABAJA
Orit Tabaja is a Board Member of Chassida Shmella, an organization of Ethiopian Jews in New York eager to educate Americans about the heritage of this ancient Jewish community. For thousands of years, when storks flew overhead on their way back from Israel, Ethiopian Jews would turn their faces toward the sky and chant, "Shmella, shmella, agarachin Yerusalem behena" -- Amharic for "Stork, stork, how is our country Jerusalem doing?"
Today the stork is the symbol for Chassida-Shmella. Chassida-Shmella hosted its kickoff program November 2004 in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the airlift to Israel called Operation Moses, the culmination of a 3,000 year desire of the Ethiopian Jews to return.
Orit, a former Israeli army officer, emigrated to Israel when she was 4 years old. She knows that Ethiopian Jews are misunderstood throughout the world. Orit and other Chassida-Shmella leaders seek to set the record straight. "I want people to know about us," she says, "We have a lot of problems in Israel that we can help solve, so that Ethiopians can be more successful. It's also important to see the positive."

MAIRAV ZONSZEIN
Mairav was born and raised in New York City to an Israeli mother and a Polish-Mexican father. After earning an International Baccalaureate diploma from the United Nations International High School in 1999, she moved to Israel and enrolled in Tel Aviv University, where she completed a BA in English Literature and Middle East History. While living and studying in Israel, Mairav worked as a proofreader and contributing writer for the Haaretz English Edition newspaper.
She moved back to New York and in July of 2004 began working as Director of Programs and Academic Affairs for Meretz USA, where much of her time was devoted to the launch and operation of the Union of Progressive Zionists, a grassroots student organization promoting peace, pluralism and justice in Israel/Palestine. In July 2005 she became Executive Director of the UPZ.