Anshe Sholom B'nai Israel Congregation
Meet Our Instructors
Meet Our Instructors
Nikki Paley Cox teaches poetry and composition at the University of Illinoisat Chicago. She has an MFAfrom Emerson Collegeand has been published in The Jewish Womens' Literary Annual, The World Jewish Digest, River Oak Review, After Hours, Hanging Loose, Briar Cliff Review, and Another Chicago Magazine. Her poem in BCRwas nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is currently at work on a full-length play.
Rabbi Avi Finegold received his ordination from Rabbi Yeshua Tzvi Shmidman at Yeshiva Noam HaTorah in Montreal, and is a graduate student at the University of Chicago Divinity School. He has taught high school Talmud and Philosophy, and was a Teaching Fellow at the Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik Institute in Boston. Rabbi Avi is the co-chair of Limmud Chicago and spends most of his days as a full-time Abba.
Rachel Kohl Finegold is the Education & Ritual Director at ASBI, where she holds the Dr. Carol Fuchs Kaufman Rabbanit Chair. She completed the Scholars Circleat 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 at Camp Nesher in Pennsylvania, as well as other camp and theater settings in the U.S. and abroad, have given her a passion for informal Jewish education. She is currently enrolled in the inaugural class of Yeshivat Maharat, a new institution training Orthodox women as spiritual leaders.
Rachel S. Harris is Assistant Professor of Comparative and World Literature, and in the Program of Jewish Culture and Society at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she teaches modern Hebrew Literature. Her research focuses on suicide in Hebrew literature, and contemporary Israeli writing.
Rabbi Yehoshua Karsh received his M.Ed in Guidance and Counseling, and spent seventeen years in Jerusalemcontinuing his studies and teaching at Ohr Somayach, Neve Yerushalayim Jewish Educational Network, B'not Torah Institute and Sha’arim. Upon moving to Chicago, Rabbi Karsh became Director of Outreach at the Chicago Community Kollel, and helped found the Torah Learning Center of Northbrook. Rabbi Karsh currently lives in Northbrookwith his wife, Tzippy, and their four sons.
Aviya Kushner is the author of And There Was Evening, And There Was Morning, about the experience of reading the Bible in English after a lifetime of reading it in Hebrew. Her essays have appeared in Partisan Review, The JerusalemPost, The Wilson Quarterly, and Poets & Writers. Her fiction has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, and her poems have been published in Harvard Review, Prairie Schooner, Passages North, The Saint Ann’s Review, and Salamander. She holds an MFAfrom The University of Iowa in nonfiction writing, an MA from Boston University’s creative writing program in poetry, a Cértificat Supérieur from the Sorbonne, and a BA from The Johns Hopkins University in the Writing Seminars and the History of Art.
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, two of whom attend the new multidenominational school of Chicago, the Chicago Jewish Day School.
Elan Sherbill, a native of Norhbrook, IL, has studied Torah at the Skokie Yeshiva, Yeshivat HaKotel and Yeshivat Bat Ayin. While at Bat Ayin, Elan was influenced by the teachings of Hassidut, particularly those of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov. He now spends his week working in the e-commerce industry in downtown Chicago.
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 Schooland 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.
Dov Weiss is a doctoral candidate in rabbinic theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School and is the Director of Admissions at the Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical Schoolin New York. He has rabbinic ordination from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (affiliated with YU) and an MA in Modern Jewish History from Yeshiva University. A former Wexner Graduate Fellow, he previously served as a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalemand Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies at University of Illinois.