Meet Our Instructors

Meet Our Instructors

Rabbi Jordan Bendat-Appell is on the rabbinic faculty of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality (New York), and is the co-founder and director of the Center for Jewish Mindfulness in Chicago. Jordan was ordained by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in 2008, after which he served as the rabbi at Aitz Hayim Center for Jewish Living in Glencoe, IL. Prior to pursuing his rabbinical path, Jordan studied Conservation Biology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, spent several months at Zen centers in California and France, and studied Jewish text at the Conservative Yeshiva and Machon Pardes in Jerusalem. While in rabbinical school he was part of a pioneering program in Mussar study with Rabbi Ira Stone. He lives in Highland Park with his wife Yael and their son Adin.

Yotam (Tom) L. Bornstein is a Cemeterian with Waldheim Jewish Cemetery/Zion Gardens Cemetery, and was formerly a Cemeterian at Rosehill Cemetery. His second career is as the Marketing Partner of AMI Israel & Mediterranean Tours, based in Ramat Aviv, Israel and Chicago. He lives in Lakeview with his wife Linda of 28 years, and is a dual memberr of Anshe Sholom & Anshe Emet Synagogues.

Rachel Kohl Finegold is the Education & Ritual Director at ASBI, where she holds the Dr. Carol Fuchs Kaufman Rabbanit Chair. She completed the Scholars Circle at the Drisha Institute in New York, received her B.A. in Religion from Boston University, and has studied at Midreshet Lindenbaum and MaTaN in Jerusalem. Her numerous years as a staff member in several camp settings have given her a passion for experiential Jewish education. She is currently enrolled in the inaugural class of Yeshivat Maharat, a new institution training Orthodox women as halachic and spiritual leaders.

Rabbi Asher Lopatin is the rabbi of Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel Congregation. A musmach of both Yeshivas Brisk (Rav Ahron Soloveichik) and Yeshiva University, he received his B.A. from Boston University, and completed an M.Phil and doctoral work at Oxford University studying Medieval Islam and Islamic Fundamentalism on a Rhodes Scholarship. Rabbi Lopatin and his wife Rachel Tessler Lopatin were both Wexner Graduate Fellows, and they have four children, three of whom attend the new multidenominational school of Chicago, the Chicago Jewish Day School.

Tova Wiener Nadler received her B.A. in computer science from Harvard, and works as a software engineer for Google. She studied at Michlalah-Jerusalem College, as well as many other formal and informal Jewish educational settings. Tova recently moved to Lakeview with her husband, Hillel.

Stef Susnow teaches Talmud and Bible at the Chicagoland Jewish High School in Deerfield, IL (yes, it is a long commute).  She received her Masters degree in Jewish Education at the Pardes Institute in Jerusalem after earning a BA in Jewish Literature at the University of Toronto.  Stef lives with her husband Matt and two plants right here on Melrose St. (a very short commute to shul).  

Rabbi Dr. Julian Ungar is an interventional neurologist who trained in the U.K. with a prior degree in music from the Royal Academy. He earned his M.A. from the Harvard Divinity School and a Ph.D. in Ancient Near Eastern studies from Brandeis University. His projects include such topics as Pain and Spirituality, Chassidism and Post Modernity, as well as a reconstruction of the musical notation of Psalms. His children are Eli, Naftali, Batya, Tsiona, Ayelet, and Aliza.