Officers:

• Steve Masters, President: Staff Attorney, City Council of Philadelphia; Philadelphia, PA
• Sue Swartz, Interm Vice President: Educator & Writer, Bloomington, Indiana
• Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater, Secretary: Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center; Pasadena, CA
• David Albert, Treasurer: PhD, Department of Government, University of Texas-Austin; Austin, TX

Members:

• Allan Abrams, Semi-retired tax attorney, investment advisor, professional mediator; Prairie Village, KS
• Aaron Ahuvia, Associate Professor of Marketing, University of Michigan; Ann Arbor, MI
• Rainer Waldman Adkins, Artist and Educator, Art & Design Service; Seattle, WA
• Cherie Brown, Executive Director, National Coalition Building Institute; Washington, DC
• Marcia Freedman, President Emeritus; Berkeley, CA
• Molly Freeman, Educator & Consultant, Distance Learning and Technology Integration Research; Berkeley, CA
• Rabbi John Friedman, Judea Reform Congregation; Durham, NC
• Ivan Handler, Chief Information Officer, Illinois Dept of Healthcare and Family Services; Evanston, IL
• Jan Jaben-Eilon, Freelance Writer; Atlanta, GA
• Roger Kahn, Professor Emeritus, Metropolitan State College of Denver; Denver, CO
• Gil Kulick, Communications Consultant; New York, NY
• David Matz, Director, Dispute Resolution Graduate Programs, University of Massachusetts; Brookline, MA
• Alison Pepper, Coordinator, Early Education Accreditation Project; Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies; New York, NY
• Donna Spiegelman, Professor of Epidemiologic Methods, Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Harvard School of Public Health; Boston, MA
• Sid Topol, President, The Topol Group; Boston, MA
• Sarah Turbow; Student, Yale University; New Haven, CT
• Beth Wasserman, Environmental Engineer; Somerville, MA
• Rabbi Scott B. Weiner, Hebrew Tabernacle Congregation; New York, NY
• Lara Weitzman, Principal, Organization Development and Dynamics Consulting; New York, NY

*Affiliations are for identification purposes only.

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STEVE MASTERS, President. On November 1, 2007 Steve Masters took office as Brit Tzedek’s 2nd National President. He is a founding board member of Brit Tzedek and is the former national chair for advocacy. For the past 20 years, Steve has been actively engaged as a leader in the Pro-Israel, Pro-Peace community. Steve earned his B.A. in Political Science from Yale University and his J.D. from Boston University School of Law. His law practice has included stints as a poverty lawyer, union-side labor lawyer and legislative attorney for the Philadelphia City Council.

While residing in Israel for a year in the mid-1980’s, Steve worked as volunteer American attorney with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and lectured on Zionism and Middle East peace issues for the Moshe Sharrett Institute of the World Labor Zionist Movement.

Steve sits on the board of the Greater Philadelphia Jewish Community Relations Council and Philadelphia Metropolitan Area Jewish Labor Committee and is a former board member of his synagogue Mishkan Shalom.

In 2003 Steve was featured in the documentary "PASSIONATE VOICES: American Jews and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" which aired on public television and was one of a handful of American Jews who traveled to Geneva Switzerland to witness the public commitment ceremony for Israelis and Palestinian architects of the Geneva initiative on December 1, 2003.

In 2006 Steve became one of the Center for Progressive Leadership's inaugural Pennsylvania Fellows by completing its nine month intensive leadership development program for emerging leaders.

(Photo by Michael Koehler)

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SUE SWARTZ Vice President, has been committed to social justice for over 3 decades as a labor organizer, feminist activist, & multicultural educator. She lives in Bloomington, Indiana (a blue town in a very red state) where she teaches part-time at Indiana University and is the founding co-chair of the local Brit Tzedek chapter. An award-winning poet, Sue is currently at work on a book of Torah-inspired poems with subjects ranging from carnival sideshows to undocumented workers. After a 6-month sabbatical spent in Haifa, Israel, in 2008 with her partner Bruce, she is working hard to master modern Hebrew. Her other passions include ballroom dancing, dark chocolate, and her 2 grandsons.

 

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RABBI JOSHUA LEVINE GRATER, Secretary, was ordained by the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1999. Thereafter he spend two years as a Marshall T. Meyer Rabbinic Fellow for Congregation B'nai Jeshurun in New York City and three as the rabbi of Congregation Ahavath Israel in Kingston, New York, before becoming the spiritual leader of the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center in 2003.  He plays percussion, teaches Yoga and Torah and is trained as a Jewish meditation teacher.

Rabbi Grater’s work is a balance of activism, tikkun olam, and spiritual discipline. As an activist, he is involved in local social justice causes, often with interfaith coalitions.  His writings have been published in Tikkun and on SocialAction.com, and he is a regular Torah contributor to the Los Angeles Jewish Journal.  He is Corresponding Secretary of the Southern California Board of Rabbis and chair of the social action committee, serves on the board of Brit Tzedek V’shalom and is the chair of its Los Angeles chapter, as well as being on the board of the Chaim Weizmann Community Day School, and on the Advisory Board of The JustVision Project.  He is a proponent of contemplative prayer in his own synagogue and in the general community. He lives in Pasadena, California with his wife and two children.

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DAVID ALBERT, Treasurer, holds BA in Government & History from the College
of William & Mary in Virginia and a PhD in Middle East Studies from the University of Texas-Austin. His dissertation was on the politics of the US-Israel "Special Relationship" and its connection to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. He is a co-founder, national board member, and Austin Chapter Chair of Brit Tzedek v' Shalom. He is also a co-founder of Salaam-v-Shalom, an online Arab-Jewish dialogue group. David has traveled extensively through Israel and the West Bank.

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