Steven Windmueller has served in a number of capacities with the School of Jewish Nonprofit Management (formerly the School of Jewish Communal Service) and with Hebrew Union College. From June of 2006 until June of 2010, he served as the Dean of the Los Angeles Campus of the Hebrew Union College. Prior to that, in 1995, Steven was named the Director of the School of Jewish Communal Service, and in 2009 he was named to the Rabbi Alfred Gottschalk Chair in Jewish Communal Service, one of only twelve endowed faculty positions at HUC.

Before coming to HUC-LA, Steven held a number of prominent positions within the Jewish community over the course of a thirty year professional career. He began his professional career on the staff of the American Jewish Committee, served for twelve years as a federation director in upstate New York, and ten years as the Executive Director of the Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles.

At the SJNM, Dr. Windmueller teaches the course on “Leadership in Jewish Communal Service,” advises masters theses, conducts research and publishes on aspects of Jewish communal affairs and polity. He has published several books, including You Shall Not Stand Idly By (2004, the American Jewish Committee), a textbook on Jewish community relations, and with Professor Gerald Bubis, a major study on the formation of the UJC (United Jewish Communities) entitled Predictability to Chaos?? How American Jewish Leaders Reinvented their National Jewish Communal System (2005). His numerous articles and monographs include "The Second American Jewish Revolution" (2007); "A Jewish Perspective on the Global Economic Revolution"(2008), published by USC's Casden Institute; and his study on "Jewish Communities of the West," recently released by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, where Dr. Windmueller serves as a Fellow.

A specialist on political issues and American Jewish affairs, Dr. Windmueller has appeared on CNN, PBS, NBC, and other nationally syndicated media offering commentaries on Jewish public affairs matters. He recently launched “The Wind Report,” an interactive website (www.thewindreport.com) dealing with the Middle East, Jewish public and civic affairs, and global social trends.

Richard Siegel was appointed Director of the HUC-JIR School of Jewish Nonprofit Management (then the School of Jewish Communal Service) in August 2009, having served as Interim Director and strategic planning consultant since December 2007. Prior to coming to HUC-JIR, Richard had a long career as a professional in Jewish nonprofit management, arts administration and cultural entrepreneurship. He was with the National Foundation for Jewish Culture (now the Foundation for Jewish Culture) for 28 years until June 2006, the last 16 years as Executive Director.

His work at the foundation helped raise the visibility of the arts as an increasingly important venue for the contemporary Jewish conversation and the expression of Jewish identity. He established the Jewish Endowment for the Arts and Humanities to provide funding support for artists, scholars and cultural institutions, with programs such as the Fund for Jewish Documentary Filmmaking, the Fund for New Play Commissions in Jewish Theater, and the 6-Points Fellowships in the Arts. He also organized major national and international conferences and festivals in theater, dance, music, literature and visual arts, and produced several award winning National Public Radio programs.

Richard received an MA in Jewish Education from the Lown Center for Contemporary Jewish Studies (now the Hornstein Program) at Brandeis University in 1972 and an MA in Jewish History from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1974. His master’s thesis at Brandeis was "The Jewish Whole Earth Catalog: Theory and Development" which he subsequently developed into The Jewish Catalog (JPS, 1973), the best selling guide to the Jewish counter-culture. His other books include The Jewish Almanac (Bantam Books, 1981) and The Writer in the Jewish Community: An Israel-North America Dialogue (Associated University Press, 1993). He has written numerous chapters and articles on aspects of contemporary Jewish culture, as well as several strategic plans and field studies, including "The Commission Report on the Future of Jewish Culture in America" (2002).

He received the Bernard Reisman Award for Excellence in Jewish Communal Service from Brandeis University in 2002 and the Jewish Cultural Achievement Award in Cultural Leadership from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture in 2004.

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Bruce Phillips is a Professor of Jewish Communal Service in the School of Jewish Nonprofit Management where he teaches one of the foundational courses on “The Evolution and Structure of the American Jewish Community.”

Dr. Phillips is among the leading sociologists studying the contemporary Jewish community, specializing in the sociology and demography of American Jewry.

Electronic Publications: A Jewish Sociologist Deciphers the Intricacies of Intermarriage

Phil Liff-Grieff is the Associate Director of BJE, the central agency for Jewish education in Los Angeles. In that capacity, he oversees the agency’s Center for Excellence in Complementary Education, Early Childhood and Parent Education, and Teen Experiential Education.

At the School of Jewish Nonprofit Management, Liff-Grieff teaches electives in “Jewish Experiential Education” and “Nonprofit Management in the Digital Age.” He has been working extensively in the area of Web2.0 and Social media in education and in the world of non-profits and has led workshops and webinars for local teachers, Jewish community professionals, Rabbis and Kehilliyot Da’at (a national Community of Practice for Jewish Community Professionals engaged in community-building work).

Prior to assuming his position at the BJE, Liff-Grieff was the founding Director of the Jewish Federation of the Greater San Gabriel and Pomona Valleys, a community on the outskirts of Los Angeles. He has also served as the Director of the LA Federation’s Youth Department and Committee for Programs in Israel, was the Director of Informal Education at Herzl Schools and has worked in a variety of Jewish camps, schools and youth movements.

Phil holds a Masters Degree in Education from the University of Judaism in Los Angeles (now the American Jewish University) and a Bachelor's Degree in Jewish Studies from UCLA. He was the first recipient of the American Jewish University’s Mickey Weiss Award for Outstanding Alumni.

Richard Levy was the Director of the School of Rabbinic Studies HUC-JIR Los Angeles (presiding at its first ordination in 2002) through June 2009 when he was appointed to the newly-created position of Rabbi of the Campus Synagogue and Director of Spiritual Growth. At the School of Jewish Nonprofit Management, he teaches the foundational course in “Judaism: Philosophy, Ritual and Practice.”

Richard served for two-years as the President of the Central Conference of American Rabbis and was the architect of the Statement of Principles for Reform Judaism, the "Pittsburgh Principles," overwhelmingly passed at the May, 1999 Convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR). He is the author of A Vision of Holiness: The Future of Reform Judaism, published in 2005, and editor and primary contributor to a High Holyday Machzor, On Wings of Awe, to appear in a revised edition in 2011. Prior to joining the HUC-JIR, Rabbi Levy was Executive Director of the Los Angeles Hillel Council.

Drew Kugler is an organizational counselor and founder of the Kugler Company which advises executives and professionals from around the world on issues of communication, collaboration, and leadership. With his coaching practice now in its fourth decade, he works with the senior ranks in an array of industries and enterprises, including professional services, entertainment, and consumer products, among others. The purpose of his practice is to create provocative conversations with his clients so that they, in turn, will work more productively with others. Drew delivers this work in personal, team, and speech settings.

Drew has also held management positions in the Hotel, Textile, and Retail sectors, following a Master’s Degree in Communication Studies and three years of University teaching. He has also provided comment on ABC and NPR Radio and CBS News, along with guest lecturing at Stanford University and NYU.

At the HUC-JIR School of Jewish Nonprofit Management, Drew teaches “Collaborative Communication for Jewish Professionals.”

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Joshua Garroway is Assistant Professor of Early Christianity and Second Commonwealth Judaism at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles. In the School of Jewish Nonprofit Management, Dr. Garroway teaches the course on “Biblical and Rabbinic Sources.”

Dr. Garroway completed his rabbinical studies at HUC-JIR in Cincinnati and his doctorate in New Testament studies at Yale. His first book, entitled "Neither Jew nor Gentile, but Both: Paul's 'Christians' as 'Gentile-Jews,'" will explore the ways in which Paul's epistle to the Romans constructs Jewish identity, and the role this played in the ensuing emergence of Christianity.

Dr. Garroway's scholarly interests include Jewish identity in the ancient world, the origins of Christianity, Jewish-Christian relations in late antiquity, and postmodern historiography.

Jacob Cunningham studied at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and did his graduate work at the University of California, Los Angeles.

At the School of Jewish Nonprofit Management, Jacob teaches “Introduction to Jewish History” and “Modern Jewish History.” He is the author of the recently published Addiction: A Reference Encyclopedia, and is currently working on a book about Jewish women of the early American West.

Steven M. Cohen is Research Professor of Jewish Social Policy at HUC-JIR, and Director of the Berman Jewish Policy Archive at NYU Wagner. Steven also serves as Director of the Synagogue Studies Institute of Synagogue 3000 and Director of the Florence G. Heller-JCCA Research Center. At the SJNM, Steven consults on research projects, supervises theses, and leads specialized seminars for graduate students, faculty and alumni.

Steven has written or edited a dozen books and hundreds of scholarly articles and reports on such issues as Jewish community, Jewish identity, and Jewish education. With Arnold Eisen, he wrote the ground-breaking study, The Jew Within: Self, Family and Community in America. Steven is also the co-author with Charles Liebman of Two Worlds of Judaism: The Israeli and American Experiences, as well as Cosmopolitans and Parochials: Modern Orthodox Jews in America with Samuel Heilman. His current research interests extend to emerging forms of Jewish community and identity among younger Jews in the United States.

Of particular importance to the field of Jewish professional leadership, in Fall 2010, he published “Profiling the Professionals: Who’s Serving Our Communities?,” a study of Jewish communal professionals sponsored by the Jewish Communal Service Association of North America and the Berman Jewish Policy Archive.

To access his articles through the Berman Jewish Policy Archive, click here:

Professor Gerald Bubis is the founding director of the School of Jewish Communal Service (now the School of Jewish Nonprofit Management) and the Rabbi Alfred Gottschalk Professor Emeritus of Jewish Communal Service at HUC-JIR. He is currently Vice President and Fellow at the Jerusalem Center for Public.

Jerry has served as lecturer, trainer and consultant in over 100 communities throughout the world. He has published extensively on the organizational dynamics of the Jewish community and has authored several seminal books, including Growing Jews - Selected Writings (Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles, 2001), From Predictability to Chaos: How Jewish Leaders Reinvented Their National Communal System, with Steven Windmueller (Center for Jewish Community Studies, 2005), and The Director Had a Heart Attack and the President Resigned, (Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Revised Edition, 2005).

Sarah Bunin Benor, a specialist in American Jewish language, culture, and community, is Associate Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies at the Los Angeles campus of Hebrew Union College. At the SJNM, she teaches “Jewish Social Research: Trends and Analysis,” as well as an elective, “American Jewish Language and Identity in Historical Context.” She also teaches in the rabbinic school and at the University of Southern California. Dr. Benor supervises the SJNM capstone projects and serves as a thesis advisor.

Her research interests include Jewish languages, American Jewish identity and culture, sociolinguistic variation, ethnography, and Orthodox Jews. She has published several articles, including “Mensch, Bentsh, and Balagan: Variation in the American Jewish Linguistic Repertoire,” “Ethnolinguistic Repertoire: Shifting the Analytic Focus in Language and Ethnicity,” and “Do American Jews Speak a ‘Jewish Language’? A Model of Jewish Linguistic Distinctiveness.” She is the founder, producer, and editor of the Jewish Language Research Website, and she is the founder and moderator of the Jewish Languages Mailing List.

In 2008-2010, she was part of a research team of six social scientists, led by Jack Wertheimer, that studied young Jewish leaders. Dr. Benor’s contribution was a study of Jews in their 20s and 30s who are serving as professional and lay leaders at Jewish organizations in Los Angeles. She investigated which organizations are or are not considered part of the establishment and why. One of her findings was that the young leaders at these organizations tend to differ in political orientations, views on Jewish issues, occupations, and socioeconomic status. A short article based on the report was published in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, and more in-depth articles are forthcoming in the Journal of Jewish Communal Service and a book with Brandeis University Press.

Also in the past few years, Dr. Benor conducted a survey of American Jewish language and identity, in collaboration with Steven M. Cohen. The survey yielded over 50,000 responses and received a great deal of media attention. Benor and Cohen published a summary paper for a general audience, as well as several academic papers.

Dr. Benor, who received her Ph.D. in linguistics from Stanford University in 2004, is currently finishing a book based on her dissertation research, entitled Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism. This study, based on a year of ethnographic and sociolinguistic fieldwork in a strictly Orthodox community, looks at the strategies ba’alei teshuva (newly Orthodox Jews) use to learn Hebrew and Yiddish words and other distinguishing practices of Orthodox Jews. A sample of her findings is available in Sh’ma.

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