Yonatan Gutfeld

Music Director
yonatangutfeld@gmail.com

About Yonatan

Yonatan Gutfeld grew up in Jerusalem, where he studied music composition. He was active in the Tel Aviv singer-songwriter scene and toured the country with his band after releasing his debut album.

Since 2012 Yonatan lives in NYC where he records his songs, teaches and writes music for theatre productions.

In 2017 he released Time’s Tyranny, an album of new compositions to Shakespeare sonnets in Hebrew translation.

In 2019 he released In Exile Even In His Own Room, a selection of songs set to lyrics by poet Ory Bernstein.

In 2020 he released Acht U Shtaim, an album of original Hebrew children songs.

Hear Music from The New Shul →

Daphna Mor

About Daphna

Originally from Israel, Daphna Mor is an internationally renowned musician and ritual leader, hailed by the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune for her virtuosity. Daphna has performed on such prestigious stages as Summer Stage, NY, with the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center, and as a soloist at Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood, and on stages all over North America and Europe. She is co leader of the ensemble East of the River. Since moving to New York, she has established herself as a leading musician, educator prayer leader in the Jewish world, serving as a Musician in Residence at B'nai Jeshurun Synagogue, and building the Early Childhood program at Brotherhood Synagogue in Gramercy Park. In 2014 she joined Rabbi Laurie Phillips z”l as co leader of Beineinu, a New York based Initiative dedicated to connecting people to Jewish tradition and culture. Co leading dozens of musical prayer gatherings, B’mitzvah ceremonies and robust educational program, Beineinu has become a Jewish and spiritual home for many New York households.
Mor is a passionate performer and teacher of liturgical music of the Jewish diaspora (Piyutim), focusing on brining awareness to the global element of prayer and including those melodies in Jewish rituals. She was invited to Mumbai India where she gave a master class of Piyutim, while learning new local Indian ones and incorporating them in New York. In other educational initiatives, Daphna acts as the Musician to the Education Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art connecting Art and Music Education. Daphna lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with her husband Daniel and their two children Alona and Artie (daphnamor.com)

Susan Meyers

Executive Director
susan@newshul.org

About Susan

Susan comes to the New Shul with over three decades of professional experience as a leader in the arts community and a lifetime of involvement as a lay leader in the Jewish world. For the past eight years, Susan was Co-Executive Director of STREB, an internationally recognized dance company whose Brooklyn home, the STREB Lab for Action Mechanics (SLAM), Susan developed as a performance venue, community space and international action factory.

Prior to STREB, Susan was the founder and principal of MEA Mgmt, a consulting firm providing strategic planning, fundraising and programmatic direction to nonprofits in the performing arts, social service and philanthropic communities including Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists/UJA, New York City Ballet, the Levin Family Foundation, ComposersCollaborative, Women in Need, the New 42nd Street Redevelopment Corporation, among others. Other professional experience includes: Director of the National Dance Residency Program, a grant program of the New York Foundation for the Arts sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts; Executive Director and Development Director of the Trisha Brown Dance Company; Director of Development at The Kitchen; and Story Editor for Walt Disney Productions. Susan has served on the boards of Dance/USA and Movement Research and has been a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation, NewMusic USA and the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund.

Susan holds an MFA in Arts Management from Brooklyn College and a BA in English Literature and Dramatic Arts from the University of California, Berkeley. Susan is a member of the Hollis Hills Bayside Jewish Center in Northeast Queens and has served on the synagogue's Board of Trustees and as Chair of its Education Committee. Having held leadership roles in both United Synagogue Youth and B'nai Brith Youth Organization as a young adult, Susan is the proud mother of four sons who have all been involved in USY - l'dor v'dor.

Itamar Dotan Katz

Director of Operations
itamar@newshul.org

About Itamar

Itamar Dotan Katz was born in 1990 in Jerusalem, Israel and is a photographer focusing on communities and landscapes affected by conflict.

He began his journey with the visual arts, studying filmmaking and directing short films in High School. He continued his education in filmmaking and philosophy at the Tel-Aviv University while developing his career as a bartender and hospitality expert which allowed him to travel all over the world.

He graduated from the International Center of Photography's Creative Practices Program and the Photojournalism and Documentary Program in 2020.

Ellen Gould

About Ellen

From the beginning, Ellen Gould's mission as Musical Director/Cantor has been to make the New Shul a singing community. "We don't have a choir, we are the choir."

Says Ellen, "I don’t need the attention of a solo singer - I’ve been a performing professional for most of my life. My goal is to share with the community the joy of full-throated and full-hearted expression of the spirit that can only come through the use of its own voice."

In the world of theater, Ellen is best known for her double Emmy award-winning musical "Bubbe Meises, Bubbe Stories." Her many other performance credits include leading roles in productions from Lincoln Center to The Public Theatre, as well as featured roles on HBO, PBS-TV, and NPR. Her writing credits include "Confessions Of A Reformed Romantic," "Seeing Stars," "The Glass House," and "Blessed is the Match" - all of which received New York productions.

Abby Stein

About Abby

Abby Stein, our 5784 scholar in residence, is a Jewish educator & rabbi, award winning author, speaker, and activist. She was born and raised in a Hasidic family of rabbinic descent, and is a direct descendant of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidic Judaism. Abby attended Yeshiva, completing a rabbinical degree in 2011. In 2012, she left the Hasidic world to explore a self-determined life. In 2015 Abby came out as a woman of trans experience. Since coming out, she has been working to raise support and awareness for trans rights and those leaving Ultra-Orthodoxy. Her story has been covered in the New York Times, New York Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, Jewish Daily Forward, Daily Mail, NBC, Vogue, InStyle, and more, as well as live appearances on CNN, Fox News, HuffPost Live, ShowTime, NowThis, PopSugar and internationally. In 2016, Abby was named by The Jewish Week as one of the “36 Under 36” young Jews who are inspiring change in the world, and in 2019 she was named by The Forward as one of the “Forward 50” most influential American Jews. In 2018 she was awarded the Pride Award by the Brooklyn Borough President. She studied gender studies and political science at Columbia University in New York City. She currently serves on the National Council for Jewish Women’s “Rabbis For Repro” Advisory Board, as well as several other rabbinical boards. Her memoir Becoming Eve: My Journey from Ultra-Orthodox Rabbi to Transgender Woman was published by Seal Press in November 2019. Her second book, Sources of Pride, will be published by Ben Yehudah Press in 2023. She speaks regularly at universities, synagogues, and Jewish organizations across the globe, including the 92nd Street Y, Koffler Center for the Arts in Toronto, OUT@NBC Universal, and at the 2019 Women’s March in Washington, DC.

Frank London

About Frank

Trumpeter/composer Frank London is a member of the Klezmatics, Hasidic New Wave, has performed with John Zorn, LL Cool J, Mel Torme, Lester Bowieπs Brass Fantasy, LaMonte Young, They Might Be Giants, David Byrne, Jane Siberry, Ben Folds 5, Mark Ribot, Maurice El Medioni and Gal Costa, and is featured on over 100 cds. His own recordings include INVOCATIONS (cantorial music); Frank Londonπs Klezmer Brass Allstarsπ DI SHIKERE KAPELYE and BROTHERHOOD OF BRASS; NIGUNIM and THE ZMIROS PROJECT (Jewish mystical songs, with Klezmatics vocalist Lorin Sklamberg); THE DEBT (film and theater music); THE SHEKHINA BIG BAND; the soundtrack to THE SHVITZ; the soundtrack to Perl Gluck's THE DIVAHN and four releases with the Hasidic New Wave.

Elana Ponet

About Elana

A student of the way of life as an Art, a seeker, supplicant, and quester, Elana Ponet teaches what she does not yet know. How else to learn? She trained home daycare workers in Jerusalem, has run nursery school programs, and directed the Hillel Children’s School at Yale for more than 20 years, an alternative Sunday school for elementary school children and adolescents. She has supported generations of college students as they face and begin to live into big unanswerable questions. Elana, who has a B.A. in Literature (English) from Boston University, a Masters in Child Development from the University of Cincinnati and an M.S.W. from Wurzweiler of Yeshiva University, has spent years studying Jewish subjects - Bible studies, Jewish Philosophy, Jewish Music, Talmud, Hebrew - and is currently studying Yiddish. Elana and Rabbi Jim LOVE SPENDING time with their 4 children and their AMAZING FAMILIES.

Rabbi Burt Siegel

About Rabbi Burt

Rabbi Burt Siegel was ordained at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion through the Rabbinic Honors Program. His first position was at Riverdale Temple, where he rose from Assistant Rabbi to Senior Rabbi in one year. After leaving Riverdale Temple , he was the Founding Rabbi of the Shul of New York and remained the Rabbi for about 25 years. Deeply immersed in spiritual seeking and attracted to Eastern spiritual philosophy, Rabbi Burt travelled to India 13 times, spending a month each year at various ashrams and temples. His spiritual vision is a blend of Hindu\Budddhist spirituality and a profound embracing of liberal Jewish spirituality. He is involved in many volunteer projects presently, particularly teaching English to immigrants. He is also a volunteer Senior Counselor for Identity House , a counseling center for the LGBTQ+ Community of which he is a member, hoping to inspire LGBTQ+ young people to love and live with authenticity. He hopes his example of a life lived richly and met with great respect will make it easier for young people to be who God intended them to be. Rabbi Burt is one of the greatest fans of Rabbi Misha.

Michael Posnick

About Michael

Michael Posnick is a graduate of Yeshiva University and Yale School of Drama. He has directed more than 100 plays and music-theatre pieces in venues including the Manhattan Theatre Club, Yale Repertory Theatre, Theatre for the New City and Lincoln Center. His interest in theatre celebrating Jewish themes spans decades; he worked with the Traveling Jewish Theatre and served as Artistic Director of the Mosaic Theatre at the 92nd St. Y and most recently, directed Rabbi Misha’s play, Pharoah. He co-authored Nine Contemporary Jewish Plays, published by University of Texas Press. A Professor Emeritus of Manhattanville College, he has taught at Yale, Hunter College, the National Theatre Institute at the O’Neill Theatre Center and with the National Theatre of the Deaf. For more than four decades he has served on the faculty of the School of Practical Philosophy.

Rabbi James Ponet

About Rabbi Ponet

Currently the Howard M. Holtzmann Jewish Chaplain, Emeritus, at Yale University, James Ponet served as director of Yale Hillel and Jewish Chaplain at Yale from September 1981 until July 2015. He earned his undergraduate degree from Yale in Religious Studies and his master’s and doctoral degrees from Hebrew Union College, where he was ordained in 1973. After his ordination, Rabbi Ponet and his wife Elana lived and worked in Israel for eight years during which time the couple had three children. Ponet taught at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, the Shalom Hartman Institute, pursued doctoral work in medieval Jewish philosophy at Hebrew University and served in the IDF Artillery. Rabbi Ponet currently teaches a course entitled “The Book of Job and Injustice” at Yale Law School.

David Ponet

About David Ponet - Scholar In Residence

David Ponet leads UNICEF’s Global Volunteer Initiative (GVI), an organizational reform effort that seeks to leverage the power of people in communities to drive positive impact for children and young people. In addition to his role with GVI, Ponet also leads UNICEF’s Green Rising initiative, mobilizing millions of young people across the globe to take green actions at the grassroots level. At UNICEF headquarters, Ponet previously led parliamentary engagement and spearheaded the organization’s movement-building efforts during the global refugee crisis in 2015-16, rallying public support and shaping discourse across multiple countries. David has a background in research and politics and holds a PhD in political science.